unability

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ ability.

Noun

unability (usually uncountable, plural unabilities)

1. Lack of ability; inability.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     difficulty doth not make me despaire, much lesse my unability: for it is but mine owne.

   • 1644, John Milton, Areopagitica:

     there being so many whose businesse and profession meerly it is, to be the champions of Truth; which if they neglect, what can be imputed but their sloth, or unability?

   • 1999, Albert J. Widmann, The Stone Age of Faith:

     Until today we have not made much progress over Democrit who postulated that it is only our unability to register and explain a great number of fast events in a non-linear way, i.e. not according to the principle of cause and effect.

   • 1999, Christian Bühler, Harry Knops, Assistive Technology on the Threshold of the New Millennium:

     For the most common unabilities of disabled and older to perform different tasks in the kitchen, some adapted elements, including a robot-arm, have been designed.

   • 2012, Johan H. C. Reiber, P.W. Serruys, Advances in Quantitative Coronary Arteriography:

     Failures were related to the unability to selectively place the guiding catheter at the coronary ostium in 2 cases and to the unability to cross the lesion in 8 cases.

   • 2012, Walter Berger, Financial Innovations in International Debt Management:

     Equally ambivalent is the attempt to operationalize country risk by differentiating a sovereign debtor's "unability" and "unwillingness" to pay.

   • 2012, Julian F. Johnson, Roger S. Porter, Liquid Crystals and Ordered Fluids - Volume 2:

     The main factors that determine the location of the boundaries for the region of existence of a phase and thus its transition to another phase seem to be its ability or unability to incorporate water.