disability
/dɪsəˈbɪlɪti/noun
disability is spelled D-I-S-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is disabilty: about 410 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 52 of all searches for the word. Disability is a noun meaning “A condition characterised by a significant limitation in a person's physical or intellectual powers or ability”. The plural of disability is disabilities.
How many letters and syllables are in disability?
| Letters | 10: D-I-S-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 5 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 16 times per million words; the 5,025th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, disabilty, about 410 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell disability?
Disability is spelled D-I-S-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 52 of the searches for disability in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is disability?
Disability appears 16 times per million words in written English, the 5,025th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce disability?
- /dɪsəˈbɪlɪti/
Disability has 5 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-disability.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of disability
- disabilities plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does disability mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A condition characterised by a significant limitation in a person's physical or intellectual powers or ability.
people with disabilities
- 2
The state of having such a condition; the state of being disabled.
- 3
A limitation in function (the things that a person can do or achieve) that is driven by any combination of their impairments (the medical facts about them) and the imperfect state of society's inaccessibility that sometimes fails to accommodate their needs.
- 4
obsoleteAn inability.
- 5
A lack of legal qualification to do something; legal incapacity or incompetency.
- 6
A duty to refrain from altering a person's legal relations; correlative of an immunity.
- 7
informalRegular payments received by a disabled person, usually from the state.
I had to go on disability after the accident.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Disability in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Behinderung , Invalidität |
| French | invalidité , pension d'invalidité |
| Portuguese | incompetência |
| Spanish | incapacidad |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does disability come from?
Circa 1570 disable + -ity.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).