disability

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Inability and awkwardness
accident-prone
adorkable
all thumbsidiom
amateurish
amateurishly
fumbling
fumblingly
functional illiteracy
gauche
gauchely
inexpertly
jack-of-all-trades
jack-of-all-trades, master of noneidiom
klutzy
like a bull in a china shopidiom
uncoordinated
uneducable
unenterprising
unequal
ungainly

inability | American Dictionary

inability
noun[ C/U ]
us/ˌɪn·əˈbɪl·ɪ·t̬i/
a lack of ability to do something:
[ Cusually sing ]an inability to read and write

Examples of inability

inability
The story of his inability to keep silent after this abjuration has been told many times.
Patients suffering from progressive autonomic failure with primary degeneration of autonomic neurons show a characteristic inability to contract the distal urethral sphincter.
In his inability to force this nameless woman to marry him, he faced a definite curtailment of his former power.
This was demonstrated by the inability of the country's political leadership to comprehend the rapid regrouping of political forces.
Default risk is related to the inability of a borrower to reimburse a loan or a bond.
Most of the remainder focused on their inability to bear additional costs (34 per cent).
The first disadvantage of small size lies in the inability to realize the external economies of scale discussed in the previous section.
Thus, many of the failures of econometrics are easily grasped as manifestations of structural changes combined with the inability to predict such changes.
The recurring inability to efficiently collect pension contributions is a striking example of limited administrative capacity that undermines policy implementation.
In general terms, fatigue reflects an inability, (perceived or actual) to maintain the expected level of work.
This mismatch is mainly related to the inability of primary producers to harvest the photons incident on the sea or the land surface.
The manufacturing sector grew rapidly but its long-term development was constrained by an inability to compete in international markets.
The overwhelming reason for a failed interview in 2000 was the inability to locate and contact the respondent.
The conspicuous failure of orthodox game theory is its inability to account for cooperative behavior in noniterated social dilemmas.
Some authors (14) have suggested that inability to critically appraise the quality of clinical practice guidelines has been a barrier to their use.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.