disable
Americanverb (used with object)
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disables,
present (3rd person singular)
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disabled,
past participle, past
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disabling
present participle
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to make unable or unfit; weaken or destroy the capability of; incapacitate.
The detective successfully disabled the bomb.
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to impair or injure (a person or animal) physically or mentally.
The accident disabled him for life.
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to make legally incapable; disqualify.
Minors are legally disabled from entering into a contract.
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Digital Technology. to make (a device, system, or feature) unable to function; turn off.
Some of the car’s advanced safety features can be disabled.
verb
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to make ineffective, unfit, or incapable, as by crippling
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to make or pronounce legally incapable
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to switch off (an electronic device)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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disablesimple
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disablessimple
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have disabledperfect
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has disabledperfect
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am disablingprogressive
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are disablingprogressive
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is disablingprogressive
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have been disablingperfect progressive
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has been disablingperfect progressive
Past
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disabledsimple
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had disabledperfect
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was disablingprogressive
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were disablingprogressive
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had been disablingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of disable
Explanation
When an injury disables someone, it leaves the person seriously hurt, probably for the rest of their life. If a car accident disables you, you are permanently limited in some physical way. Illness, as well as injury, can disable people: for example, diabetes disables some sufferers by leaving them blind or weakening their hearts. A completely different way to disable is to make something unusable or unable to work in a certain way. if you disable your smoke detector while you cook nachos in your smoky oven, it won't work until you reconnect the batteries.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
They recommended that the Department of Education disable them.
From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2026
Further analysis showed that their particular variant did not completely disable the gene.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 14, 2026
A sophisticated cyberattack could disable payments, hospitals, utilities or financial markets without destroying a single building.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
Young people would also have the option to choose to view a non-algorithmic social media feed that isn’t personalized and disable autoplay.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2026
Doubtless Master Artemis would have understood the physics of this machine; all Butler cared about was whether or not he could disable it.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
Some regularly put their cars in sport mode, which in some models disables the engine from shutting off when the car is idle.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026
A "dark" vessel -- usually a tanker or cargo carrier -- deliberately disables or manipulates transponders in a bid to go undetected by public tracking systems like Kpler's MarineTraffic.
From Barron's ● Mar. 31, 2026
Technology is a shape or a form that enables certain things and disables others, and there’s room to navigate, but there are also constraints.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2025
Though infections are at a relative low these days, we're still dealing with COVID-19, which kills hundreds of Americans per week and disables countless others.
From Salon ● Mar. 14, 2025
Several of the drones hover too close to the gates—when they try to cross over, they hit an invisible shield that disables them, sending them clattering to the ground.
From "Warcross" by Marie Lu
Even the normal bacteria living in the intestine produced enough low-level chemical stress to cause problems when this protective system was disabled.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 5, 2026
It recently repealed a pair of arcane provisions giving roughly three million public-sector retirees and certain disabled retirees larger Social Security checks at a cost of about $200 billion over 10 years.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 3, 2026
The app developers temporarily disabled notifications before saying Monday that operations had been restored.
From Barron's ● Nov. 2, 2026
But the law means such voters, as well as those who are disabled and elderly, have fewer options for help.
From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2026
I didn’t even know there was a special category for disabled bowling.
From "Ugly" by Robert Hoge
By disabling the system, scientists had removed not only an inflammatory signal but also an important source of cellular protection.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 5, 2026
"When those systems become persistently dysregulated, the result may be the profound and disabling fatigue seen across multiple disorders."
From Science Daily ● Oct. 2, 2026
But people who inherit two copies develop a disabling, life-threatening blood disorder.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
"You've got inequalities in urban infrastructure, housing, structural conditions around things like social networks and care. If you put all of those together and then you throw heat in, that's what's disabling," Kirkcaldy said.
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2026
She once saved a mission by disabling an Indonesian passenger train using only “some rando stuff I found in the snack bar.”
From "City Spies" by James Ponti
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
