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Disability   Listen
noun
disability  n.  (pl. disabilities)  
1.
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."
2.
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.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disability" Quotes from Famous Books



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

... national, the hired servants from the Israelites, were more favored than either the hired, or the bought servants from the Strangers. No one from the Strangers, however wealthy or highly endowed, was eligible to the highest office, nor could he own the soil. This last disability seems to have been one reason for the different periods of service required of the two classes of bought servants—the Israelites and the Strangers. The Israelite was to serve six years—the Stranger until ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... themselves as well as to their tutor. This of course made them more happy and more diligent. There were no attempts now to work upon their parents for a holiday; no real or pretended head or tooth-aches, whose disability was urged against the greater torture of ill-conceded mental labour. They began in fact to understand; and, in proportion to the beauty and value of the thing understood, to understand is to enjoy. Therefore the laird and his lady could not help seeing that the boys were ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... heats of Washington, he had some symptoms which he thought premonitory, and he speaks of the next session of Congress as probably the last which he should ever attend. March 25, 1844, he gives a painful sketch of himself. Physical disability, he says, must soon put a stop to his Diary. That morning he had risen "at four, and with smarting, bloodshot eyes and shivering hand, still sat down and wrote to fill up the chasm of the closing days of last week." If his remaining days were to be few he was at least resolved to make them long ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... the part that matters most. You know he was all wrong morally. You don't know why.... Conway was an out and out degenerate. He couldn't help that. He suffered from some physical disability. It went through everything. It made him so that he couldn't live a man's life. He was afraid to enter a profession. He was ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... immediately felt he had nothing to dread. He might have been a Marathon athlete, so far as any hint to the contrary went. Ted appeared never to notice his disability or to be conscious of any difference in their physical equipment; and when, as sometimes happened, he stooped to arrange a pillow, or lift the wheel-chair over the threshold, he did it so gently and ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... cried and dimly realized that the change in her appearance had something to do with the doctor's prediction of physical disability. She loathed and resented it immediately. Suddenly conscious of her bare legs she ran home, horrified at the tightness of her frock that showed the roundness of her figure. As she passed the Mactavish ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... considered by many of my university colleagues something of a "jingo." Indeed, a member of the University Board of Regents said that I ought to be compelled to enlist. As a matter of fact, compulsion would have been quite unnecessary had it not been for physical disability. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... appointed by the president, 4 by the Political Organizations Forum, 2 represent institutions of higher learning; to serve eight-year terms) and Chamber of Deputies (80 seats; 53 members elected by popular vote, 24 women elected by local bodies, 3 selected by youth and disability organizations; to serve five-year terms) elections: Senate - members appointed as part of the transitional government (next to be held in 2011); Chamber of Deputies - last held 15 September 2008 (next to be held September 2013) election ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... members. Among these was Coke, who had never walked so far since he was granted a captain's certificate. He swore copiously as he lumbered along, and, what between shortness of breath and his tight boots and clothing, the latter disability being added to by a ridiculously inadequate Brazilian tunic, he was barely able to reach the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... render them admissible to that service, though it was adopted in the House of Commons, was rejected by the House of Lords. But Pitt, who on that occasion had supported Wilberforce, did not confine his views to the removal of a single petty disability, but proposed to put the whole body of Roman Catholics on a footing of perfect equality with Protestants in respect of their eligibility to every kind of office, with one or two exceptions. And during the autumn of 1800 he was busily engaged in ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... first became personally aware of Arthur's disability. For several weeks she had been getting used to him as a normal being, attractive because he was so undeniably handsome and well-developed, more than usually attractive to her, perhaps, because she was dark and he was fair. She ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... of the world as an inferior article of grain, when compared with the winter wheat of states further south, and the flour made from it was also looked upon as much less valuable than its competitor, made from winter wheat. The state labored under this disability in realizing upon its chief product for many years, both in the wheat, and the flour made from it. Many mills were erected at the Falls of St. Anthony, with a very great output of flour, which, with the lumber manufactured at ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... mental development of such individuals they should seek to be great, glorious, and to achieve the supernatural, since they, themselves, are denied the ordinary satisfactions. If, in addition, such individuals believe that they have had a divine call, if the disability of the body so preys on the mind that the sensitive structure gives way to delusions, then there results an aberration from the normal and usual processes of thought,—to be sure not the rabid, violent form of mental disease, but yet ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... world is essential for one who would successfully deal with men, and distinguish those whom he can from those whom he cannot trust. Defects of this nature, which sometimes seem like flaws in the man's character, may be set down to this one disability—that he was not educated and was not by habit a man of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... them. We cannot be wholly mistaken in thinking that it is these rare spirits which sustain, enliven, and enrich the world. And yet they seem to be regarded with no special favour by the Creator; they have to contend with insuperable obstacles; the very sensitiveness of their spirit is a torturing disability. The selfish, worldly, hard, brutal temperaments have almost invariably a far better time of it in the world; yet both the exalted spirit and the brutal spirit are undeniable facts; the lofty, unselfish, pure spirit is as real and existent as the vile and sensual spirit. Are we all under a lamentable ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... at Arles, "against which 4,000 men from Marseilles, dispatched by the club, are at this moment marching?" Is it at Bayeux, "where the sieur Fauchet against whom a warrant for arrest is out, besides being under the ban of political disability, has just been elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly?" Is it at Blois, "where the commandant, doomed to death for having tried to execute these decrees, is forced to send away a loyal regiment and submit to licentious troops?" Is it at Nimes, "where ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... names.... He spoke tritely about her journey to London, reminding her of the slowness of the train between Whitcombe and Salisbury, and wondered whether she liked London better than Boveyhayne. His old disability to say the things that were in his mind prevented him from re-establishing his intimacy with her. He tried to say, "Hilloa, Mary!" but could not do so, and his shyness affected her so that she stood before him, fingering her fan nervously, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... the want of written language, and the obstacles in the way of its acquirement, which constitute the chief disability of the deaf mute in the attempt to gain an education. If you set a child of seven years of age to learn Greek, requiring him to receive and express his ideas wholly in that language, you would not hope for any very clear expression of those ideas with less than a year's instruction, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... New York City," in No. 35, Vol. 8, and "Uncle Sam's Ships," in No. 18, Vol. 10. The school-ship boys serve but two years, while the naval apprentices remain until they reach the age of twenty-one, unless sooner discharged for misbehavior or disability. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... it was for me to experience a shock of something like fear. Yet the personage who called up this unlooked-for sensation in my naturally hardy nature was old, and to all appearance harmless from disability, if not from good-will. His form was bent over upon itself like a bow; and only from the glances he shot from his upturned eyes was the fact made evident that a redoubtable nature, full of force and malignity, had just brought its quota of evil ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... common law as a civil contract and might be entered into legally by a boy of fourteen or a girl of twelve years of age, provided they were under no legal disability to contract marriage. This was called the age of consent, or discretion, and a marriage contracted prior to this time was inchoate only, and might be repudiated by either party upon arriving at the legal ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson

... than to trace back through many a century of ancestors, the various—often conflicting—elements which go to make up the character of someone whose life (without the clue given by the history of his forbears) is often a strange contradiction. Unable to understand some disability which spoils an otherwise fine personality, one looks back and there is the explanation. One's finger rests on the raison d'etre of this disability. Long since it had its birth, its inauguration, in the squeeze, so ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... of the Civil War veterans felt toward the Democratic party was fanned into flame by Cleveland's attitude toward pension legislation. The sympathy of the country for its disabled soldiers had early resulted in a system of pensions for disability if due either to wounds or to disease contracted in the service. Early in the seventies the number of pensioners had seemed to have reached a maximum. Two new centers of agitation, however, had appeared, the Grand Army of the Republic and the pension agent. The former was originally ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... been left behind in the night attack on the schooner, and it was due to his disability that the trio was able to steal the dinghy. Bevins said that Doc had once killed a man, and Jarrow knew about it, with the result that the captain held the Negro ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... right of rule under the Constitution, and the great principle of constitutional liberty in his election and elevation stood justified. It mattered not then, nor matters it now, to us, what may be individual opinion of his merits or demerits, his ability or his disability. There he is, not as a private citizen, but as the head of our Government: his individuality is lost in his official embodiment. This principle being acknowledged, and party opinion being buried, in theory at least, at the foot of the altar of the Government de facto, whence is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... 1847, found myself in a raging fever, which continued more than two months before I was able to rise from the bed, and then I was as helpless as a child. I was unable to walk, and was lifted from the house into the carriage to get the fresh air, and continued under disability until October, when I was again able to ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... Were society absolved from this tyranny, matters would begin to mend. Equalized protection would be the consequence. Protection, not only to the colored man, but protection in an almost equal degree to the non-slaveholding white population, hitherto brought under the ban of disability by a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... were fit, and of such as unwisely part from thence, before they be ready, I dare now bolden myself, when the best be gone, to do some good among the mean that do tarry, trusting that my diligence shall deal with my disability, and the rather because the desire of shooting is so well shot away in me, either ended by time or left off for better purpose. Yet I do amiss to mislike shooting too much, which hath been hitherto my best friend, and even now looking back to the pleasure which I found in ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... of the case, and yet not impoverish the Established clergy. And he is more than ever persuaded that the best way to check the predominance of the Roman Church in Ireland is to deliver the Romanists from every species of religious disability. On this theme Peter harps in a vein which, if he were a clergyman writing over his own name, would be ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... observed in her since that evening at the Academy. It was not only that she was dressed in some sort of loose dishabille that was in eminent contrast to the sweeping silks and satins in which I had hitherto beheld her adorned; or that she was laboring under some physical disability that robbed her dark cheek of the bloom that was its chiefest charm. The change I observed went deeper than that; it was more as if a light had been extinguished in her countenance. It was the same woman I had beheld standing like a glowing column of will and ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green

... carefully watched over during the succeeding years of disability by his distinguished son and his daughter-in-law, of whose talent he was sincerely proud. Nevertheless, he suffered of necessity many lonely hours, in spite of all that ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... Borealis are practically one big electric "leak," and that the paralysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization of all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often "glue up" when near the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in science why the same disability should not be experienced at higher levels when the ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... because the subject of education is of such vital importance, and the mere fact that the much-advertised system to which I have alluded has attained such success, would seem to indicate that many people are aware that they share that curious disability in the intellectual equipment of the average Englishman to which I have referred; for unless they had habitually only half-listened, half-read, half-understood, there could be no need for their undergoing a course of instruction late in life. Surely it is more sensible to check this peculiarly ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing

... is the total inability to sustain any contract by an appeal to the tribunals of the one country, on the part of the subjects of the other. In the law of almost every country, the character of an Alien Enemy carries with it a disability to sue, or to sustain, in the language of the civilians, a persona standi in judicio. The peculiar law of our own country applies this principle with great rigour—the same principle is received in our Courts of the Law of nations; ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson

... world, now that she was alone. She had the feeling that if anything were to happen—if the motorman should demand his pay at the door, or the hotel-keeper refuse to go her bond, she would be helpless. The Captain, for all his shortcomings and physical disability, was master of every situation. He had been schooled by stern powers, and his capabilities of defence were still ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... in a mystic incantation delivered, standing shoeless before the Ark of the Covenant at festival seasons, to redeem the mother's first-born son when neither parent was of priestly lineage—these privileges combined with a disability to be with or near the dead, differentiated his religious position from that of the Levite or the Israelite. Mendel Hyams was not puffed up about his tribal superiority, though if tradition were to be trusted, his direct descent from Aaron, the High Priest, gave ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... imams at Cairo of his desire to conform to their faith. If we may believe that dubious compilation, "A Voice from St. Helena," he bade them consult together as to the possibility of admission of men, who were not circumcised and did not abstain from wine, into the true fold. As to the latter disability, he stated that the French were poor cold people, inhabitants of the north, who could not exist without wine. For a long time the imams demurred to this plea, which involved greater difficulties than the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... serious disability. It cannot manoeuvre with sufficient celerity. For instance, if it is necessary to turn round in a narrow lane, valuable time is lost in the process, and this the airman turns to account. In hilly country it is at ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... subordinates under his command to police the pueblo, and supervise the public grounds, such as grazing lands, the cemetery, estufas, &c. The lieutenant war captain executes the orders of his principal, and officiates for him during his absence, or in case of his disability. The six fiscals are a kind of town police. It is their duty to see that the catechism (Catholic) is taught in the pueblo, and learned by the children, and generally to keep order and execute the municipal regulations of the pueblo under ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... soiled sheet, had communicated to Jane no pain of a personal sort. So far, indeed, as their trend took her on the score of feeling, she might even have found something satisfying in Mr. Keene's news, since this was merely a statement of his financial disability. All along Jane had been dreading the hour when, instead of this frank disclosure of "hard luck," there should come to her a parcel of money. Not to have any money to send might conjecturally be distressing to Mr. Keene; but Jane felt that he would ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... be just one succession of hoping things pass off all right?" she wondered. And she did wish Francis wasn't so scornful about all the things Logan said. For Logan, in spite of his mysterious disability, was very brilliant; he wrote essays for real magazines that you had to pay thirty-five cents for, and when Marjorie said she knew him people were always very respectful and impressed. Marjorie had been brought up to respect ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer

... Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the president and vice-president, declaring what officer shall then act as president, and such officer shall act accordingly until the disability be removed, or a president shall ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... no suggestion of any legal disability on the part of a muskenu; he is merely a person of less consideration. Whether or not his ranks were recruited from the children of slaves by free parents is not clear, but it is very probable that ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... when others in the room are talking; they cannot dictate a letter if a third person is within hearing; they cannot add a column of figures when others are talking. Habit and effort may reduce such disability, but in some instances it will never even approximately eliminate it. Such persons may be very efficient employees, and their inability to concentrate in the presence of distractions should be respected. Every business man is careful to locate every piece of machinery where ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... know that Reisen instructed his wife about six months ago, in the event of his death or disability, to place all her interests in your hands, and to be guided by your advice ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... development (and you will find this kind of woman even on County Council's), is completely unconscious of the sexual element in herself and in human nature generally. Nay, though one went from the dead, he could not bring it home to her that unsatisfied sexuality is an intellectual disability. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... Including Paris and Metz, the era of rifled weapons actually shows an increase of 20 per cent in the time-endurance of permanent fortifications. Granted that a mere measurement in days affords no absolute standard of comparison, the striking fact remains that in spite of every sort of disability the French fortresses, pitted against guns that were not dreamed of when they were built, acquitted themselves quite as well as the chefs-d'oeuvre of the Vauban school in the days of their glory." Even in the cases of fortresses whose reduction was ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... then over this dose of maternal tenderness, coming from the ruddy old lady of the Seven Hills; smiled, too, at my own disinclination, not to say disability, to meet these melting favours. Glancing at the title-page, I found the name of "Pere Silas." A fly- leaf bore in small, but clear and well-known pencil characters: "From P. C. D. E. to L—y." And when I saw ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... would not say a word to hasten him home, especially as Rachel would have driven Bessie to Timber End, so that it would only be returning to an empty house. And such was Mr. Clare's sociableness and disability of detaching himself from pleasant conversation, that the uncle and nephew scarcely started for their walk across the park in time for the seven o'clock service. Mr. Clare had never been so completely ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... elements, but boldly projects into it certain principles, and works from those. It has often been said of Scott that he could not draw a lady who was young and beautiful; the glamour of chivalry blinded him, he lowered his eyes and described his emotions and aspirations. Something of the same disability afflicted Stevenson in the presence of a ruffian. He loved heroic vice only less than he loved heroic virtue, and was always ready to idealise his villains, to make of them men who, like the Master of Ballantrae, 'lived for an idea.' Even the low ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... the number of men and women of good standing in the world who cannot read might have a certain interest. There are probably more persons laboring under that disability than is usually supposed, and this with no reference to unfortunates who in early life have missed the opportunity of learning their A B C, but thinking only of those who have never found the way to utilize a knowledge of letters,—of persons, in short, who do not know what to do ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... remedy. There must be set aside the cases where the lack of a job is due to one rest day in seven and to legal holidays, a total of nearly 65 days in most American states; to the worker's being on strike; to temporary sickness; finally, and more difficult to distinguish, that due to continued disability, physical, mental, or moral, to do the work up to an acceptable standard and to retain a job in the occupation chosen by the applicant. The first cannot be called a problem, and the others constitute ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... in the beginning and neither in his heart perhaps ever having forgiven himself wholly for his choice. Mr. Wilson could never get Mr. Lodge wholly out of his mind in the last two years of his Presidency, a disability which prevented him from looking quite calmly and sanely ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... been, in girlhood, what is called a beauty; she had dazzled men's eyes and turned their heads; and when the first bloom was past, she had gone out of the glare, having neither satisfied the world nor been satisfied with it, because of the higher craving that is worldly disability. She had turned into the common paths of life and looked upon her beauty and her triumph as past. And yet, ten years after the triumphs of her girlhood, this day, this hour, found her more beautiful than she had ever been before. The stimulus of a new and more perfect climate, the daily labour for ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... Act, which excluded Catholics from the House of Lords. (They had already been shut out from the House of Commons by the oath of Supremacy, which was required of commoners, though not of peers.) The disability created by this statute was not removed from them until the present century,—in the reign ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... state. (The name is in reference to Cincinnati, the Roman patriot who left the plough to serve his country.) Membership was limited to officers, native or foreign, of the Continental army who had either served with honour for three years or had been honorably discharged for disability, and to their descendants. ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... thought more acute, a thought less precipitate and simple, than his adversary. He is not to be led away by such captious terms as natural and unnatural. It is obvious to him that a woman's disability to rule is not natural in the same sense in which it is natural for a stone to fall or fire to burn. He is doubtful, on the whole, whether this disability be natural at all; nay, when he is laying it down that a woman should not be a priest, he shows some elementary conception ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... wandered away in vague curiosity to the papers scattered over the floor—"we have had enough of that; you cannot deceive us—you cannot deceive me twice. You played at deafness—why? Because Anitra must have some disability to distinguish her from Georgian? Because you are not Anitra? Because you are ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... shortening of this working-life of the workman is due both to a lengthening of the necessary period of preparation, and to the demand of these processes for so full a use of the workman's forces that even the beginning of senescence will count as a serious disability,—in many occupations as a fatal disability. It is also a well ascertained fact that effectual old age will be brought on at an earlier period by overwork; overwork shortens the working life-time of the workman. Thorough speeding-up ("Scientific Management"?) will unduly shorten this ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... failing these, spirited ponies chafing at the bit and impatiently tossing their long, waving manes. But one could hardly call old Ben a steed at all, and he proved the only animal available that afternoon. Ben suffered from a disability of his right rear leg which caused him to raise his right haunch spasmodically when moving. The effect was rhythmic but grotesque, much as if Ben thought he was turkey-trotting. Otherwise, too, Ben was unlovely. His feet were by no means dainty, his coat was a dirty looking dappled-white, and his ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... members whom the minister did not approve, it followed that the ecclesiastical ruler had an efficient negative on the admission of every freeman; and thereby, as excommunication from the church created a civil, as well as ecclesiastical disability, it also followed that both the attainment and continuance of political rights were, to all practical purposes, in the hands of ecclesiastical rulers." By the provincial charter all this was abolished. The ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... not a disease of itself. It is merely a sign of some disorder of the nervous system. It may be shown by complete disability on one side of the body, or in some particular portion, and only certain sets ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... one, among all beings thou art the foremost in puissance. In merit, in energy, in fame, and in prosperity, thou yieldest to none, and thou art, indeed, superior to all. In consequence, however, of this disability in respect of a share (in the Sacrificial offerings) I am filled with great grief, O sinless one, and a tremor overtakes me from head ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... J. Peabody and William Waldron, of Company F, were discharged on surgeon's certificate, for disability, and ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke

... friends knew this, and spared him the necessity of refusing. He had once a headache all day, because at a dinner, the night before, a false report had reached him that he was going to be asked to speak. This alone would have sufficed to prevent him from accepting any public post. He confesses the disability in a pretty note to Professor Knight, written in reference to a recent meeting of the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... grounds of his improvement, but they were rather extrusions than sieges, or settings down, for he stayed not long in a place; and, being the youngest brother, and the house diminished in his patrimony, he foresaw his destiny, that he was first to roll through want and disability, to subsist otherwise before he came to a repose, and as the stone doth by long lying gather moss. He was the first that exposed himself in the land-service of Ireland, a militia which did not then yield him food and raiment, for ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... and the possibility of his death or permanent disability. The shock to all the golden hopes was severe and it brought bitterness and ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... it was the American policy not to carry their offensive beyond Spain's West Indies possessions, events moved more slowly. Rear Admiral Sicard, in command of the North Atlantic squadron based on Key West, was retired in March for physical disability and succeeded by William T. Sampson, who stepped up naturally from senior captain in the squadron and was already distinguished for executive ability and knowledge of ordnance. Sampson's first proposal was, in the event of hostilities, a bombardment of Havana, a plan approved ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... that year; and early in the summer Professor Romanes sounded Huxley to find out whether he would undertake the second lecture for 1893. Huxley suggested a possible bar in his precarious health; but subject to this possibility, if the Vice-Chancellor did not regard it as a complete disability, was willing to accept a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... other enterprising members of the press-room community made ready for the scrutiny of the official eye in various ways, practising many devices for procuring a temporary disability and a permanent discharge. Some, horrible thought! "rubbed themselves with Cow Itch and Whipped themselves with Nettles to appear in Scabbs"; others "burnt themselves with oil of vitriol" to induce symptoms with difficulty distinguishable from those of scurvy, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... it. He learned in its terrible intensity the meaning of human kindness. And, in his course through the years, or as the years coursed by him, he realised that a pair of gollywog legs was not the worst disability which a human being might suffer. There were gollywog ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... man, Tammas, who could not read the meaning of a sign, and laboured under a perpetual disability of speech; but love was eyes to him that ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... and other public purposes. The Methodists, who outnumbered the Church of England, had for years an additional grievance in the fact that their ministers were not allowed to solemnise marriages, and it was not until 1829 that this disability ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... and rhetorical passage in Congreve's Mourning Bride better than the famous description of Dover cliff in King Lear. "The crows, sir," he said of the latter, "impede your fall." Their town breeding, and possibly, as we saw in the case of Dr. Johnson, an actual physical disability, made them distrust any clear and sympathetic rendering of the sense impressions which nature creates. One cannot imagine Dr. Johnson caring much for the minute observations of Tennyson's nature poems, or delighting in the verdurous ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... his hurt healed but slowly, and it was a good while before he could paint with his wounded arm, it was an easy matter for her to believe in the meanwhile that he would have been the greatest painter of his time, but for his honorable disability; to hear her, you would suppose no one else had ever been shot in the service ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... peace, justice and good policy both required a general amnesty, and the revocation of the acts of disability and banishment, so that only those who had been guilty of flagrant crimes should be excluded from becoming citizens. Instead of this, however, the State Legislatures generally continued in a course of hostile action, and treated the conscientious and pure, and the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... these children were born into poverty; the father's health was always poor, and when the third girl was born he was discharged from the road because of his disability, yet he was still able to put children into the world. When the oldest child was twelve years old the father died of concussion of the brain while the youngest child was born two months after ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... among my fellow-passengers; yet my most ambitious hope is not to have avoided faults, but to have committed as few as possible. I know too well that my tact is not the same as their tact, and that my habit of a different society constituted, not only no qualification, but a positive disability to move easily and becomingly in this. When Jones complimented me—because I 'managed to behave very pleasantly' to my fellow-passengers, was how he put it—I could follow the thought in his mind, and knew his compliment to be such as we pay foreigners on their proficiency in English. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... be able. The weakness that is here supposed to hinder their thus comprehending, &c., did doubtless lie in their grace, as well as their nature: for in both, with reference to them that are Christians, there is great disability, unless they be strengthened mightily by the Holy Ghost. Nature's ability depends upon graces, and the ability of graces, depends upon the mighty help of the spirit of God. Hence as nature itself, where ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the absence of research in this direction, and how man, endowed to overcome every physical disability which encompassed him on land, was powerless to live on the wide ocean, although it is teeming ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... has asked to be relieved from his command on account of disability from old wounds. Should his request be granted, who would you like as his successor? It is possible that Schofield will be ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... supreme glory of being loved by them, must be the ones to revive the Americanism of their forefathers. Nature and God would take care of the slackers, the cowards who cloaked their shame with bland excuses of home service, of disability, and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... physician, have the wound thoroughly cleaned on antiseptic principles, and put up in antiseptic dressing. A single treatment of this sort, in a comparatively trifling wound which has become in any way contaminated, may save weeks of suffering and disability, and often danger of life, and will in eight cases out of ten shorten the time of healing from forty to sixty per cent. The rapidity with which a wound in a reasonably healthy individual, cleaned and dressed on modern surgical ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... the most part of men originally farmers or mechanics—people of very limited means and education—have yet succeeded in accumulating considerable wealth, and at any rate a satisfactory provision for their own old age and disability, and for the education of their children or successors. In every case they have developed among their membership very remarkable business ability, considering their original station in life; they have found among themselves leaders wise enough to rule, and skill sufficient ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... following the heterogeneous accession to the Dale family, Joel did not leave his bed. Whether his disability was in part or altogether due to a desire to open his sister's eyes to the result of her lack of consideration, Joel himself could not have told, the correct interpretation of one's own motives being the most complex of the sciences. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... entire flower consists of this purple inflorescence. But such aristocratic culture has made the blossom unproductive of seed. Like many a proud and belted Earl, each of the pampered and richly coloured Daisies pays the penalty of its privileged luxuriance by a disability ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... high constable, governor of a royal castle, and justice of the peace have all been held by women. In fact, the lady of the manor had the same rights as the lord of the manor, and joined with men who were freeholders in electing knights of the shire without question of sex disability.[31] (A survival of the medieval rights of women may be seen in the power of women to present clergy to benefices in the Church ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... of our ancestors had an opinion very different: they fined and imprisoned their members; on great provocation, they disabled them for ever; and this power of pronouncing perpetual disability is maintained by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... and control.... God speed the day when not only in all the States of the Union and in all the Territories, but everywhere, woman shall stand before the law freed from the last shackle which has been riveted upon her by tyranny, and the last disability which has been imposed upon her by ignorance; not only in respect to the right of suffrage, but in every other respect the peer and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... think what a Sabbath-school must be like in California, where they have no pennies. It seems hardly possible that the institution can exist under such a patent disability, and yet it does. Do they work it on the same principle as the post-office in that far-off land where you 'cannot buy one postal card because the postmaster cannot make change, but must buy five postal cards or two ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... swim, the moat would be impassable were it dredged to the bottom; and since we must descend the rope singly, and the water came right up to the wall, I could not see for the life of me how this disability could be got over. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... recognized distinction which has had far-reaching effects in all student affairs, particularly class-elections, student athletics, journalism, and general society membership. The "independent" suffers no particular social disability, save as he misses the pleasant club life of the fraternity. Often, if he is a man of marked ability, he finds his independence a distinct advantage in college affairs, for non-fraternity men have always been in sufficient majority to see that the choice positions go to the "independent" ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... Perceval, Chretien de Troyes, Perlesvaus, Manessier, Peredur, Parzival. Galahad—Queste. Result, primary task healing of Fisher King and removal of curse of Waste Land. The two inter-dependent. Illness of King entails misfortune on Land. Enquiry into nature of King's disability. Sone de Nansai. For elucidation of problem necessary to bear in mind close connection between Land and Ruler. Importance of Waste Land ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... that both Zeppelins practised the same method of attack, namely, to get behind the line of ships and to drop their bombs on the fore and aft line. Their speed was great, but they seemed to suffer from one disability which made them clumsy to handle. 'It was repeatedly noted', he says, 'that the Zeppelins, when altering course, invariably "wore", and did not appear to be able to turn head to wind. This made them ridiculously easy to avoid in spite of their speed, which was surprising.' That ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... There will continue to be complete freedom of religion and protection from molestation for all denominations, provided the same be not inconsistent with morality and good order, and no disability shall attach to any person in regard to rights of property by reason of the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... to obtain an insight into the pressing questions of the time. Though in truth of a very liberal mind, he imagined himself a mass of prejudices; his Norman blood (considerably diluted, it is true) sometimes appeared to him as a hereditary taint, constituting an intellectual, perhaps a moral, disability; in certain moods he felt hopelessly out of touch with his age. To anyone who spoke confidently and hopefully concerning human affairs, Lord Dymchurch gave willing attention. With Dyce Lashmar he could not feel that he had much in common, but ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... because the lives of a large majority of them are exceedingly monotonous and real, and further, are a struggle against continual difficulties, and further still, because anything in the form of accidental injury, or any kind of illness or disability is so very serious in their own sphere. I will explain this seeming paradox of mine. Take the case of a Christmas Pantomime. Surely nobody supposes that the young mother in the pit who falls into fits of laughter when the baby is boiled or sat ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... passed since the Union, and the conditions of Ireland have completely changed. The whole system of religious disqualification and commercial disability has long since passed away. Every path has been thrown open, and English professions, as well as the great Colonial and Indian services, are crowded with Irishmen. The Established Church no longer exists. Representation has been placed on a broadly democratic basis, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... nothing. His face, as he stooped somewhat painfully, was fiery red. He took hold of a post to help himself up, pretending disability. On the post a horsehair lariat hung from the snub of a lopped-off bough of the tree that made the heavy stake. He fumbled with this while Mormon shook with laughter like a great jelly. The next moment the lariat ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... value in that regard. A few pupils in high school may actually reach the limits prescribed by their 'intelligence quotient'[15] or general mental ability, or perhaps, as Bronner[16] so interestingly points out, be handicapped by some special mental disability. If such be true, they will doubtless be found in the number of school drop-outs later referred to as failing in 50 per cent or more of their work; but we have no measurement of intelligence recorded for them to serve our purposes of prognostication. In the matter ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien

... family, the position of an unmarried daughter after she is twenty years old becomes less and less what it should be. In case of sons, the question is rarely a practical one; in those exceptional instances where invalidism or some other disability keeps a man helpless for years under his father's roof, his very helplessness is at once his vindication and his shield, and also prevents his feeling manly revolt against the position of unnatural childhood. But in the case of daughters it is very different. Who does not number in his circle of ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... idle on the field, or within striking distance. With these it was no use to argue that Buell's accident stood in the way of his activity, nor that he did not know that the action had assumed the proportions of a battle. The physical disability was denied or contested, but even granting this, his detractors claimed that it did not excuse his ignorance of the true condition of the fight, and finally worsted his champions by pointing out that Bragg's retreat by way of Harrodsburg beyond Dick's River so ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... the mother's disability, I looked brightly at Pethel, as though in ardent recognition of his prowess among waves. With a movement of his head he indicated his daughter—indicated that there was no one like her in the whole world. I beamed agreement. ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm

... event in the political history of England during the reign of George IV. was unquestionably the removal of Catholic disabilities,—ranking next in importance and interest with the Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn Laws. Catholic disability had existed ever since the reign of Elizabeth, and was the standing injustice under which Ireland labored. Catholic peers were not admitted to the House of Lords, nor Catholics to a seat in the House of Commons,—which was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... case the preputial irritation was, in all probability, the precursor of the conditions that led to the perineal fistula, the patient having had a stricture for some twelve years. Mr. Brett states that the man had been abandoned by his wife on account of his previous sexual disability, and on account, as well, of his having been incapacitated from following any vocation. After the operation all his functions were restored and ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... a woman who, from some distaste or disability, could never so much as understand the meaning of the word POLITICS, and has given up trying to distinguish Whigs from Tories; but take her on her own politics, ask her about other men or women and the chicanery of everyday existence ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... up, now?" he enquired, holding his paper in his hand when they started on again, "are you in any trouble and can I help to get you out? I'll do anything you like except play the gallant, and I only draw the line at that because of my temperamental disability. So, something is wrong?" he added gayly, "for you haven't even observed the pretty woman ahead there in ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... bed in a gale, when the wind comes cold and furious, laden with the spray of the ocean, and be sent aloft in the rigging of the ship, when she is rolling and pitching, jumping and jerking, in the mad waves. But there is no excuse at such a time, and nothing but positive physical disability can exempt ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic

... natural. Just the same, whatever advances, improvements, progress, have been made (and certainly a number of the changes in his environment, external and internal, must be admitted to be changes for the better) have been made, not by natural disability, but by natural ability. What is the physiology ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... and mind, a perfectly natural operation should not be attended with suffering. By the observance of physical and psychical laws the supposed curse can be easily transformed into a blessing. Some churchmen speak of maternity as a disability, and then chant the Magnificat in all their cathedrals round the globe. Through all life's shifting scenes, the mother of the race has been ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... but who never allowed the comic side of any transaction to pass him, to say: "Captain, look at the 'wild pigeon;' see how he scratches dirt." All soldiers carried a "nick-name," a name given by some physical disability or some error he had made, or from any circumstance in his life out of the usual order. Hardly had we taken possession of the turn-pike road and began fortifying, than the sound of shells down the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... to achieve success in eugenics we must strive to encourage the parenthood of the worthy or fit, and to discourage the parenthood of the unworthy or unfit. The unfit are those, as previously explained, who, because of mental or physical disability, are unable to create fit ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.



Words linked to "Disability" :   disablement, genu valgum, disintegration, hypesthesia, dysphasia, bowleg, bow leg, vision defect, learning disability, softness, disability payment, disabled, disability check, descensus, bandy leg, prolapsus, tibia valga, pigeon toes, disability benefit, knock-knee, unfitness, handicap, bandy legs, tibia vara, hypoesthesia, hearing disorder, anorgasmia, amputation, genu varum, visual disorder, disability of walking, hearing impairment, prolapse



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