disabled

Pluraldisabled, disableds

1. 1
   adjective

   Having a physical or mental condition that limits movement, the senses, or everyday activities.

   Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable accommodations at work.

   The museum added ramps and elevators so that disabled visitors could reach every gallery.

   Oppositeable-bodied

2. 2
   adjective

   Made incapable of working or being used, often deliberately.

   With its engine disabled, the freighter drifted slowly toward the rocks.

   Technicians left the elevator disabled until the inspection was complete.

   Similarinoperative, crippled, immobilized

   Oppositeoperational, functional, working

   Note

   Here the participle of disable has hardened into an adjective for things put out of action: engines, elevators, ships, vehicles. The Railway Carmen's Journal of 1911 uses it of railway cars wrecked during a strike and pairs it with "placed in bad order", the condition the repair shop then had to fix. Used of equipment, it carries no hint of the sense about people.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past tense and past participle of disable.

   Engineers disabled the safety override to run the diagnostic test.

   All the machines were disabled during the blackout.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty with the adjective. It is the verb when there is an action and often an agent: the feature was disabled by an update. It is the adjective when it describes a state, can be graded (more disabled, most disabled), or stands before a noun. Both main uses of the verb pass through this form: switching off a device's function and impairing a person's abilities.

4. 4
   nounnonstandard

   A person who has a disability, especially when spoken of as a group.

   Public transit reforms aim to make every station accessible to the disabled.

   The charity provides free job training for the disabled across the region.

   Note

   Usage is the whole story with the noun. Collectively, with the, it takes a plural verb: the disabled are entitled to access. The singular (a disabled) and the plural disableds are nonstandard. In careful writing, the safer choice is the adjective with a noun: a disabled person, disabled people.

   The new law gives the disabled the right to accessible polling stations.

   The survey asked disabled people which stations they found hardest to use.

5. 5
   adjective

   Disqualified under the law from exercising a right, holding an office, or performing a legal act.

   A trustee who breaches his duty may be disabled from administering the trust.

   Convicted of fraud, he stood disabled from serving as a fiduciary.

   Similarbarred

   Oppositeeligible, qualified

   Note

   Here the incapacity is a legal one. It comes from statute or judicial decree, not from the body or mind. The word usually takes from plus a gerund: disabled from holding office, from inheriting, from entering a binding contract. That construction is the surest sign of the legal reading, because the bar falls on one specific act rather than on the person's general abilities.

Showing meanings only. Show all 5