disability
Pluraldisabilities (some meanings)
- 1The condition of living with a significant limitation in one's physical or intellectual abilities.
The onset of disability in later life forced him to rethink his daily routines.
Public attitudes toward disability have shifted considerably over recent decades.
Similarincapacity
Oppositeability
Note
Without an article, the word names a general state rather than any one condition, as in the epidemiology of disability, or physical, sensory or cognitive disability. Countability is the test. A disability, or two disabilities, belongs to the individual condition; bare disability is the state itself. Incapacity is its closest synonym, and its opposites are ability and able-bodiedness.
- 2A condition marked by a significant limitation in a person's physical or intellectual abilities.
A congenital disability was identified during her first year of life.
The clinic specializes in diagnosing developmental disabilities in young children.
Similarhandicap
Note
The medical model's sense treats disability as something a person has: a condition to be identified, diagnosed and named. That is why it counts, as in people with disabilities or a congenital disability, and why handicap stands beside it as a synonym. Bancroft's Chatham, pleading his disability while suffering a universal tremor, shows the older personal use. The social-model sense places the limitation partly in an inaccessible world instead.
- 3A limitation in what a person can do, arising from both their impairments and a society that fails to accommodate their needs.
Like a key that fits the lock while the door stays jammed: the limit lies in the surroundings, not just the person.
Campaigners argued that the disability lay as much in the inaccessible transit system as in any impairment.
Better workplace design can shrink a disability that rigid offices once magnified.
Similarhandicap
Note
Here the limitation is measured in what a person can do. The cause is shared between impairment, meaning the medical facts about someone, and surroundings that fail to accommodate them. The two words are kept apart on purpose: impairment belongs to the person, while disability arises where that person meets the world. On this view, an inaccessible station or a rigid office can make a disability larger, and better design can make it smaller.
- 4Regular payments, usually from the government, made to a person who is disabled.
After the injury, he applied for disability to help support his family.
The monthly disability arrived late, leaving them short on bills.
Note
An everyday shorthand for disability benefits, it behaves like a mass noun for money. People go on disability after an accident, or ask whether you got your disability this month. The phrase go on disability is the commonest frame. In official or careful writing, the full disability benefits is clearer, since the short form can be mistaken for the condition itself.
- 5A lack of legal qualification or capacity to do something.
Bankruptcy imposed a disability preventing him from serving as a company director.
The statute lifted the disability that once stopped certain heirs from inheriting.
Similardisqualification
Oppositequalification, competency, capacity
Note
A legal status rather than a bodily one: the law withholds a capacity, such as the right to hold office, contract or inherit. It often arises from a status like minority, bankruptcy or a prior conviction. Lawyers speak of a disability being imposed and later lifted. Disqualification is the near synonym, and its opposites are capacity, competency and qualification. None of these say anything about a person's health.
Less common meaning
- 6The lack of ability or power to do something.
Grossest faults, or disabilities to perform what was covenanted.
1643, J[ohn] M[ilton], The Doctrine and Discipline of DivorceNote
Formed around 1570 from disable plus -ity, the word once meant simply a want of power, with no suggestion of body or mind. John Milton writes of "disabilities to perform what was covenanted" in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643). The construction is the giveaway: disability to do something. Modern English says inability to, and the old phrasing would now be misread as the medical condition.
Practice
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Origin
Formed around 1570 from "disable" combined with the suffix "-ity".