incapacity

Etymology

It is borrowed from French incapacité,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} recorded in French from the 16th century,^[2][3] or, as the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English also allow, borrowed from Late Latin incapācitās,^[7][8][9] the only source Dictionary.com gives.^[9] Merriam-Webster Unabridged takes the French noun as formed from in- and capacité, the source of capacity,^[4] and the OED compares Italian incapacità, which it finds in Florio in 1598.^[2] Etymonline and Klein call the Latin noun medieval and derive it from Late Latin incapāx (“incapable”),^[3][5] from in- (“not”) and capāx (“able to hold much, capable”),^[3][5] from capiō (“to take”), from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to grasp”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lack of capacity; inability, powerlessness: 1611, in Florio's Queen Anna's New World of Words.^[2][4] Etymonline has the same sense in the 1610s,^[3] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1605–15.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The general sense has stayed the central one, later followed by of, for or an infinitive (before 1665),^[2] or used for an inability to take, receive or deal with something (1656).^[2] The legal sense, disqualification or an instance of it, is recorded from 1648 in the Articles of Peace,^[2] and Etymonline, which dates it to the 1640s, explains it as an inability to take, receive or deal with something.^[3] It gave rise to the verb incapacitate, first in a legal sense in the 1650s.^[3] Johnson (1755) distinguished "want of natural power", "want of power of body" and "want of comprehensiveness of mind",^[6] and modern dictionaries similarly stress physical or mental inability,^[4][8] to the point of a defect or disability.^[10]

Timeline

• 1611 – lack of capacity; inability, powerlessness.^[2][4]
• 1648 – legal disqualification.^[2] Etymonline dates this to the 1640s.^[3]
• 1656 – inability to take, receive or deal with something.^[2]
• before 1665 – inability for something or to do something, with of, for or an infinitive.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Lack of ability, strength or power; inability: his incapacity to keep a secret.^{[11][10][4][2]}
2. Physical or mental inability to do something or to manage one's own affairs; a disability.^[8][10]
3. (law) Legal disqualification, or a circumstance that causes it.^{[11][2][10][8]}

Word family

• incapacitate

Related words

• capacity
• incapable
• capable
• capacious

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
7. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins