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Incapacitate   /ɪnkəpˈæsɪtˌeɪt/   Listen
Incapacitate

verb
(past & past part. incapacitated; pres. part. incapacitating)
1.
Make unable to perform a certain action.  Synonyms: disable, disenable.
2.
Injure permanently.  Synonyms: disable, handicap, invalid.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Incapacitate" Quotes from Famous Books



... and although we had men wounded, the enemy invariably got the worst of the encounter. Up to the present we had been most fortunate in bringing on all our people, but I was anxious lest some should receive wounds that would actually incapacitate them from marching. Should a man be killed outright, how much soever he might be regretted, still there was an end of him; but there was no end to the difficulty of transporting wounded men in our ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... its bent to care and industry. It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biasses to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... concerning which the men should be instructed, but lack of space prevents further treatment of them. They should be taught the proper treatment of blistered feet, for they incapacitate a great many men; the chief causes are ill-fitting shoes and our old friend "uncleanliness." Shoes are the most important article of clothing of the infantryman; each man should have one pair well broken in for marching, and two other pairs. ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... papillomas or warty growths may he left from the healed granulating or ulcerated surfaces. Sometimes these little elevations on the valves become inflamed and then adhere together, or adhere to the wall of the heart, and thus incapacitate a valve. Sometimes these excrescences undergo partial fatty degeneration, or may take on calcareous changes and ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.

... Clare, in Ireland, in right of his mother—the title-deeds of which he gave him—and next, having enjoined him not to marry before the age of thirty, on the ground that earlier marriages destroyed the spirit and the power of enterprise, and would incapacitate him from the accomplishment of his destiny—the restoration of his family—he then went on to open to the child a matter which so terrified him that he cried lamentably, trembling all over, clinging to the priest's gown with one hand and to his father's cold wrist with the other, and imploring ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... beside them were the few companies of Pennsylvanians so far from their native state. Neither Dick nor Pennington was wounded. Warner had a bandaged arm, but the wound was so slight that it would not incapacitate him. ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of literary time as thrown away. The discipline of the mind, induced by composition, is something, and it is surprising what may be done by a person who carefully "redeems" all his time. It does not, in the least, incapacitate him for business. It rather quickens ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... still more sure, the experiment was tried in the Bristol infirmary, a few weeks afterwards, on a man who had a rheumatic affection in the shoulder, so severe as to incapacitate him from lifting his hand from his knee. The fictitious tractors were brought and applied to the afflicted part, one of the physicians, to add solemnity to the scene, drawing a stop-watch from his pocket ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... subject, believe that likely. She knew exactly his business relations with his employers; that there was a fixed time for his return to England, which nothing except the very strongest necessity could alter. Even in the chance of his health breaking, so as to incapacitate him for work, he should, he always said, have to go to the hills, rather than take the voyage home prematurely. And in that case he certainly would have informed his friends of his movements. There was nothing erratic, or careless, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... possessions, that it is always questionable, whether in the very great majority of cases an increase of riches would not deteriorate the principle of benevolence; and whether, if placed amidst the splendid scenes of elevated rank, our eyes would not be soon so dazzled, as to incapacitate us either for seeing the wants of the poor, or the necessities of the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... been practising with the pistol under the tuition of our respected townsman, Mr. Woodall the gunsmith, and before the parties met he confided to the officer who acted as his second that he intended to aim at his opponent's trigger-finger and so to incapacitate him from further adventures of the kind. Extraordinary as it may appear, this intention was carried out. Captain M—l not only lost his finger, but the bullet passed up his arm and broke it above the elbow. We understand ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... tangled up in love with Alice Price ever since her high-school days. Many of the youngsters soon outgrew the affection; but it seemed to become a settled and permanent affliction in others, threatening to incapacitate them from happiness, according to their young view of it, and blast their ambitions in ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... if he is miserably poor, is happier than the average Englishman, and is happier because the nation is built upon a more humane and civilized outlook than our own. Restlessness and pugnacity not only cause obvious evils, but fill our lives with discontent, incapacitate us for the enjoyment of beauty, and make us almost incapable of the contemplative virtues. In this respect we have grown rapidly worse during the last hundred years. I do not deny that the Chinese go too far in the other direction; but for that very ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... visits, and gossip without end—excitements utterly selfish, which materialise the soul, debase its tastes, enervate its powers, rendering it incapable of all earnest labours or self-denial, and which incapacitate it from apprehending the purity, the majesty, and the surpassing wonder of spiritual realities. These are the persons who, forsooth! are so much alarmed lest their dear children should become excited about the things which arrest the attention and engage the thoughts of ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... than that," I continued, "I am only nineteen years of age; that alone is sufficient to incapacitate me." ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... and Mademoiselle de Villefort has been a faithful companion to M. Noirtier, which she cannot be when she becomes the Baroness d'Epinay. My father's melancholy state prevents our speaking to him on any subjects, which the weakness of his mind would incapacitate him from understanding, and I am perfectly convinced that at the present time, although, he knows that his granddaughter is going to be married, M. Noirtier has even forgotten the name of his intended grandson." M. de Villefort had scarcely said this, when the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... merely a more bitter realisation of utter misery. Eyre expresses his wonderment at the effect of two nights' exposure to the frost in disorganising the force. 'It had so nipped even the strongest men as to completely prostrate their powers and incapacitate them for service; even the cavalry, who suffered less than the rest, were obliged to be lifted on their horses.' In fact, only a few hundred serviceable men remained. At the sound of hostile fire the living struggled to their feet from their lairs in the snow, stiffened with cold, all but unable ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... to meet with similar treatment, the result of similar causes. No sooner did the people of Upper Canada begin to show an appreciation of his talents, than the Upper Canadian oligarchy saw in him a formidable rival to be got rid of by any means. A special Act was passed to incapacitate Mr. Bidwell from holding a seat in the Assembly. He was to be considered an alien and to be treated as an alien as the Act directed. Mr. Barnabas Bidwell was expelled. The spirit of opposition to a bad government was not, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... hardened against all compassion towards the people; and he scrupled no measure, however violent or severe, which seemed requisite to support his plan of tyrannical administration. Sensible of the restless disposition of the Northumbrians, he determined to incapacitate them ever after from giving him disturbance, and he issued orders for laying entirely waste that fertile country which, for the extent of sixty miles, lies between the Humber and the Tees [t]. The houses were reduced to ashes ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... must be acknowledged that too exclusive a devotion to imaginative and philosophical literature, especially if prolonged in life until the habits become formed, does to a great extent incapacitate a man for the business of practical life. Speculative ability is one thing, and practical ability another; and the man who, in his study, or with his pen in hand, shows himself capable of forming large views of life and policy, may, in the outer world, be found altogether unfitted for carrying ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... suddenly on a stone, and how Mary was thrown, and had her riding-habit torn to pieces, and has a deep cut just above the knee—fortunately not in the knee itself, which is doing exceedingly well, but which will probably incapacitate her from walking for days and days to come. It is well it was no worse. The accident occurred at Milton, near Gravesend, and they found Mary in a public-house there, wonderfully taken care ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... the accident is not attended with the usual pain and disability either at the time or after reduction. The facility and frequency with which dislocation recurs render the limb comparatively useless, and may seriously incapacitate the patient. We have had cases under observation in which dislocation resulted from the hyper-abduction of the arm in swimming, from throwing the arms above the head in dancing and in gymnastic exercises, and even ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... ineffective with the many, was so pernicious to the few. Miserable delusion (thought I), that encourages the ruin of health and the perversion of intellect by studies that are as unprofitable to the world as they are destructive to the possessor—that incapacitate him for public, and unfit him for private life—and that, while they expose him to the ridicule of strangers, render him the victim of his wife, and the prey ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Human nature being composed of two principal parts, which are requisite in all its actions, the affections and understanding; it is certain, that the blind motions of the former, without the direction of the latter, incapacitate men for society: And it may be allowed us to consider separately the effects, that result from the separate operations of these two component parts of the mind. The same liberty may be permitted to moral, which is allowed to natural philosophers; and it is very usual with the latter to consider ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... burthen, fashion your own faith, think your own thoughts, and pray your own prayer. To what mortal ear could I tell all, if I had a mind? or who could understand all? Who can tell another's shortcomings, lost opportunities, weigh the passions which overpower, the defects which incapacitate reason?—what extent of truth and right his neighbour's mind is organised to perceive and to do?—what invisible and forgotten accident, terror of youth, chance or mischance of fortune, may have altered the whole current of life? A grain of sand ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... alone is responsible. {118} So there is never much time to spare, with watch and watch about, all through the voyage; especially when all the ills that badly fed flesh is heir to on board a deepwaterman incapacitate some hands, while falls from aloft and various ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... resort to personalities. They frequently insinuate, and when it is safe they openly allege, that all who do not share their opinions are bad husbands, bad fathers, bad citizens, and bad men. Thus they cast libellous dust in the eyes of their dupes, and incapacitate them from seeing the real facts of the case for themselves. A notable illustration of this evil principle may be found in a recent speech by the Bishop of Chester. Dr. Jayne presided at a Town Hall meeting of the local branch of the National Society for the Prevention ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... invited by the Boston Board of Education to conduct a series of experiments with the system in the Boston school for the deaf and dumb. It is well known that deaf mutes are dumb merely because they are deaf, and that there is no defect in their vocal organs to incapacitate them from utterance. Hence it was thought that my father's system of pictorial symbols, popularly known as visible speech, might prove a means whereby we could teach the deaf and dumb to use their vocal organs and to speak. The great success of these experiments urged upon me the advisability ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various



Words linked to "Incapacitate" :   alter, lay up, injure, enable, hock, change, pinion, wound, confine, nobble, hold, restrain, modify, handicap, disable



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