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:
During the same session, Mary Kish, head of community at Twitch, took viewers through a tutorial on how to disable generative AI training through a user's channel settings.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2026
But the feature could be turned off, and a survey by consultants Censuswide found 85 percent of 16 to 18-year-olds said they would disable it.
From Barron's ● Aug. 6, 2026
Then they disable alarms and reconfigure dashboards in search of low-tech bliss.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026
Anthropic was temporarily forced to disable access to its latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, last month after the U.S. government flagged them as a security threat.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 16, 2026
The United States has formidable naval fleets in both places, and the Japanese want to disable those fleets as quickly as possible.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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
But if a student disables Opal to use a banned app, school officials are notified on an office dashboard.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2025
If the lane striping isn’t perfect, though, the lane-keeping assist sometimes disables itself, so I don’t rely on it completely.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 20, 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
Dr. Ashworth secures a mouth prop over me, a hard rubber tool that disables me from closing my mouth.
From "I Can Make This Promise" by Christine Day
Should the primary screen become disabled, a secondary gearshift selector hiding in the headliner will illuminate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 2026
We are here because one spring day in May, Joshua Fox, a 31-year-old Black disabled veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder and a checkered past, stood up and stress-tested Eatherly’s business model.
From Slate ● Aug. 20, 2026
Kurtis Crossthorn from Sheffield, who is registered blind, said the change would be "very welcome" and would make many disabled people feel "relieved" and "heard".
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
The alleged shooter's Facebook account has since been disabled.
From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026
We asked for help to send disabled and street children to school.
From "Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Changed the World" by Malala Yousafzai
“When people have access to medical care through insurance, they tend to undertake activities that can help longevity, like better preventive care, better management of chronic and disabling conditions,” Cohen said.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 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
Now, after disabling about 30 of the devices near his home in the Minneapolis area, he told AFP: "I'm not really as scared anymore."
From Barron's ● Aug. 9, 2026
Meet the car owners disabling alarms and reconfiguring dashboards in search of low-tech bliss.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
