enabled

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of enable.

   The grant enabled researchers to expand their study across three regions.

   Once the permissions were enabled, the team could open the shared files.

   Note

   The verb drops the silent e of enable and adds only -d, so the past tense, the participle and the adjective share one spelling. After be the line blurs. In "the permissions were enabled," the word can report an action someone took or describe a state, like the "switched on" adjective. Adding "by" and an agent makes it a verb, while adding more or very makes it the adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Made ready for use or action, switched on rather than blocked.

   Only users with enabled accounts can log in to the system.

   The feature stayed enabled throughout the entire test.

   Similaractive, on, operational

   Oppositedisabled, inactive, off

   Note

   When applied to people rather than machines, the word means something close to empowered, and it takes degrees. Craig Kielburger, Holly Branson and Marc Kielburger write in WEconomy (2018) that ordinary people are "more enabled than ever before." Its natural foil is disabled. Richard Rankin Russell draws on that pairing in 2022 when he quotes the description of a character as "no longer the most disabled but the most enabled."

3. 3
   adjective

   Adapted to work with a particular mechanism or system named alongside it.

   The hospital uses sensor-enabled beds that alert nurses when a patient moves.

   Most modern cars are enabled for voice control, responding to spoken commands from the driver.

   Similarequipped, compatible

   Note

   In computing it works almost like a suffix: the name of the technology comes first, and enabled is hyphenated onto it, as in Ajax-enabled or WAP-enabled. The compound describes a capability built into a product. It does not mean the feature is running at this moment, which is the job of the "switched on" sense.

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