Word.ws English Dictionary

unability

unability noun: lack of ability; inability.

Noun

unability (usually uncountable, plural unabilities)

  1. (usually) Lack of ability; inability.
    • difficulty doth not make me despaire, much lesse my unability: for it is but mine owne.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
    • 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?1644, John Milton, Areopagitica

Examples of unability in a sentence

  • 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, Johan H. C. Reiber, P.W. Serruys, Advances in Quantitative Coronary Arteriography:
  • Equally ambivalent is the attempt to operationalize country risk by differentiating a sovereign debtor's "unability" and "unwillingness" to pay.2012, Walter Berger, Financial Innovations in International Debt Management:
  • 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.2012, Julian F. Johnson, Roger S. Porter, Liquid Crystals and Ordered Fluids - Volume 2:

Forms of unability

pluralunabilities

Origin of unability

From un- + ability.

Questions about unability

What does unability mean?
Unability means lack of ability; inability.
How do you use unability in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is unability?
Unability is a noun.
What is the plural of unability?
The plural of unability is unabilities.

Words near unability in the dictionary

  1. unabideable
  2. unabiding
  3. unabidingly
  4. unabidingness
  5. unabilities
  6. unability
  7. unabject
  8. unabjured
  9. unablated
  10. unablauted
  11. unable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unability (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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