adj, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To render unable; to take away an ability of, as by crippling. transitive
2. 2
   injure permanently wordnet
3. 3
   To impair the physical or mental abilities of; to cause a serious, permanent injury.

   "Falling off the horse disabled him."

4. 4
   make unable to perform a certain action wordnet
5. 5
   To deactivate, to make inoperational (especially of a function of an electronic or mechanical device).

   "The pilot had to disable the autopilot of his airplane."

Adjective

1. 1
   Lacking ability; unable. obsolete

   "Our disable and unactive force."

Synonyms

All synonyms

disenableincapacitateafflictattenuatebatterblunt

Antonyms

All antonyms

capacitateenablere-enable

Example

More examples

"I wish I could figure out how to disable comments on my blog."

Etymology

From dis- + able.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.