Emily Dickinson Lexicon

DIS-A-BIL'I-TY, n. [from disable.]

1. Want of competent natural or bodily power, strength, or ability; weakness; impotence; as, disability arising from infirmity or broken limbs.
2. Want of competent intellectual power, or strength of mind; incapacity; as, the disability of a deranged person to reason or to make contracts.
3. Want of competent means or instruments. [In this sense, inability is generally used.]
4. Want of legal qualifications; incapacity; as, a disability to inherit an estate, when the ancestor has been attainted. [In this sense, it has a plural.] – Blackstone. Disability differs from inability, in denoting deprivation of ability; whereas inability denotes destitution of ability, either by deprivation or otherwise.