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Subjection to the direction or disposal of another; inability to help or provide for one's self. Reduced to a servile dependence on their mercy. Burke.

Capability of being determined; determinability.

To hang bending downward; to sink or hang down, as an animal, plant, etc., from physical inability or exhaustion, want of nourishment, or the like. "The purple flowers droop." "Above her drooped a lamp." Tennyson. I saw him ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and languish. Swift.…

The quality or state of being dumb; muteness; silence; inability to speak.

Want of solidity or substance; unsatisfactoriness; inability to satisfy desire; vacuity; hollowness; the emptiness of earthly glory.

y niobium, titanium, thorium, and cerium. It was so called by Berzelius on account of the inability of chemical science, at the time of its discovery, to separate some of its constituents.

should untie it should be master of Asia, Alexander the Great averted the ill omen of his inability to loosen it by cutting it with his sword. Hence, a Gordian knot is an inextricable difficulty; and to cut the Gordian knot is to remove a difficulty by bold and energetic measures.

being illiterate, or uneducated; want of learning, or knowledge; ignorance; specifically, inability to read and write; as, the illiteracy shown by the last census.

Inability; helplessness. [R.] Latimer. Logical impossibility, a condition or statement involving contradiction or absurdity; as, that a thing can be and not be at the same time. See Principle of Contradiction, under Contradiction.

mpotent; want of strength or power, animal, intellectual, or moral; weakness; feebleness; inability; imbecility. Some were poor by impotency of nature; as young fatherless children, old decrepit persons, idiots, and cripples. Hayward. O, impotence of mind in body strong! Milton.

Lack of power; inability. Bacon. Their own impuissance and weakness. Holland.

Want of capacity; lack of physical or intellectual power; inability.

The inability of any of the animal organs to restrain the natural evacuations, so that the discharges are involuntary; as, incontinence of urine.

Unsuitableness; unaptness; unfitness; inability. [Obs.] Barrow.

Want of sleep; inability to sleep; wakefulness; sleeplessness.

Want of power or skill; inability; incapacity; incompetency; as, the insufficiency of a man for an office.

To act the part of a malingerer; to feign illness or inability.

avoid doing his duty; hence, in general, one who shirks his duty by pretending illness or inability.

One who does not speak, whether from physical inability, unwillingness, or other cause. Specifically:

A state or condition which daffles reason or confounds judgment; insuperable difficalty; inability to proceed or decide; puzzle; quandary. Both of them are a perfect nonplus and baffle to all human understanding. South.