DISABILITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Disability

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/dˌɪsəbˈɪlɪti/ /dɪsəbˈɪlɪtiz/ Listen

noun

disability n. (pl. disabilities)

State of being disabled; deprivation or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like. "Grossest faults, or disabilities to perform what was covenanted." "Chatham refused to see him, pleading his disability."

Want of legal qualification to do a thing; legal incapacity or incompetency. "The disabilities of idiocy, infancy, and coverture."

Synonyms: Weakness; inability; incompetence; impotence; incapacity; incompetency; disqualification. Disability, Inability. Inability is an inherent want of power to perform the thing in question; disability arises from some deprivation or loss of the needed competency. One who becomes deranged is under a disability of holding his estate; and one who is made a judge, of deciding in his own case. A man may decline an office on account of his inability to discharge its duties; he may refuse to accept a trust or employment on account of some disability prevents him from entering into such engagements.

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Etymology of 'Disability'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Disability" Quotes from Famous Books

... shows that at last a minimum wage of $4.00 has been established for all the trades named, even Millinery. There are exceptions, but they are almost always due to some special disability on the part of the girl, and do not fairly affect a statement regarding the wage for girls of normal capacity, who have done satisfactory work during their course. The small percentage of pupils who fall below $4.00 for their ...

— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... you would make an unchangeable covenant, with an unchangeable God, come furnished with and maintain upon your hearts, an abundant measure of self-distrust; labour to be thoroughly convinced of your own nothingness and disability. "By his own strength shall no man prevail." Surely, thine own treachery may inform thee, and thine own backslidings may convince thee, to confess with Jeremiah, "O Lord, I know (I know it by sad experience) ...

— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... bill are so stringent, that to the ordinary mind it would seem that the conditions are hard enough for the applicant to have well earned the honor of the preferment, without making sex a disability. The fourteenth amendment ...

— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... deserve to be mentioned in this connection. One is, that no organ or function in plant, animal, or human kind, can be properly regarded as a disability or source of weakness. Through ignorance or misdirection, it may limit or enfeeble the animal or being that misguides it; but, rightly guided and developed, it is either in itself a source of power and grace to its ...

— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... possible; Rainham could see no motive for her deceiving him, and yet he believed she was lying. He merely shrugged his shoulders, with a rising lassitude. He seemed to have been infected by her own dreariness, to labour under a disability of doing or saying any more; he, too, gave it up. He wanted to get away out of the dingy room; its rickety table and chairs, its two vulgar vases on the stained mantel, its gross upholstery, seemed too trenchantly sordid in the strong August sun. The child's golden head—she was growing intelligent ...

— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

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