Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To deprive of strength or ability; disable.
- transitive verb To make legally ineligible; disqualify.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To deprive of capacity or natural power; render or make incapable: followed by from or for.
- To deprive of competent ability or qualification; render unfit; disqualify: as, insanity incapacitates one for marriage.
- To deprive of legal or constitutional capacity or privilege; withhold or nullify the right of.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To deprive of capacity or natural power; to disable; to render incapable or unfit; to disqualify.
- transitive verb (Law) To deprive of legal or constitutional requisites, or of ability or competency for the performance of certain civil acts; to disqualify.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb to make
incapable (of doing something)
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb injure permanently
- verb make unable to perform a certain action
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Oh, and in case anyone's wondering about why we would need to "incapacitate" this monster Padilla, soviet style:
Hullabaloo 2007
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His superiors used words such as incapacitate and immobilize.
Moonwar Bova, Ben, 1932- 1997
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The government had no reason to believe the SAPS would in any way "incapacitate" the Attorney-General in the discharge of his duty.
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JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Israeli naval commandos should have used snipers to "incapacitate" the activists on the deck of a Turkish ship who attacked as the soldiers were boarding, Israel's military chief said.
Articles 2010
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Israeli naval commandos should have used snipers to "incapacitate" the activists on the deck of a Turkish ship who attacked as the soldiers were boarding, Israel's military chief said.
Articles 2010
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"incapacitate" and "kill" jihadists suggests that it isn't foreign wars that he is opposed to-it was that particular war.
Reason Magazine - All Reason Articles from the Past Year: Page 1 2009
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The judge determined at the time that he was faking a psychotic episode that had appeared to incapacitate him for several days.
Synagogue Bomb Plotters Sentenced to 25 Years Chad Bray 2011
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While Israel has the right to defend itself, its retaliation has far exceeded efforts to release the soldiers or incapacitate Hezbollah; it is in fact destroying Lebanon.
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We have every right to incapacitate them to the best of our ability and by doing so we will be saving innocent lives in the long run.
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All forty-one hostage takers were executed by the Russian troops that stormed the building, and 129 hostages died, almost all killed by the anesthetic gas piped in to incapacitate the terrorists see Chapter 3.
The Return Daniel Treisman 2011
Prolagus commented on the word incapacitate
Horned lizards (Phrynosoma) incapacitate dangerous ant prey with mucus
Sherbrooke WC & Schwenk K (2008) Journal of Experimental Zoology 309A:447-459
(Non-technical and free-access version available here)
October 5, 2008