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

Incapacity of perceiving sounds; the state of the organs which prevents the impression which constitute hearing; want of the sense of hearing.

Want of legal qualification to do a thing; legal incapacity or incompetency. The disabilities of idiocy, infancy, and coverture. Abbott.

Deprivation of ability; incapacity. Bacon.

Belonging to one's genius or natural character; native; natural; inborn. [Obs.] Natural incapacity and genial indisposition. Sir T. Browne.

tributable; referable. A prince whose political vices, at least, were imputable to mental incapacity. Prescott.

The quality of being incapable; incapacity. Suckling.

The act of incapacitating or state of being incapacitated; incapacity; disqualification. Burke.

Want of competency or legal fitness; incapacity; disqualification, as of a person to be heard as a witness, or to act as a juror, or of a judge to try a cause.

Incapacity to hold; hence, incapacity to hold back or restrain; the quality or state of being incontinent; want of continence; failure to restrain the passions or appetites; indulgence of lust; lewdness. That Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. 1 Cor. vii. 5. From the rash hand of bold incontinence. Milton.…

energy sufficient; want of power or energy sufficient for the desired effect; inefficacy; incapacity; as, he was discharged from his position for inefficiency.

Incapacity of being engendered or produced. Cudworth.

Such a mental condition, as, either from the existence of delusions, or from incapacity to distinguish between right and wrong, with regard to any matter under action, does away with individual responsibility.

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

ment. Retiring board (Mil.), a board of officers who consider and report upon the alleged incapacity of an officer for active service. -- Retiring pension, a pension granted to a public officer on his retirement from office or service.

by failure, especially by failure to provide for one's own support, through negligence or incapacity; hence, lazy; improvident; thriftless; as, a shiftless fellow; shiftless management. -- Shift"less*ly, adv. -- Shift"less*ness, n.

in a will to take a devise or legacy, either on failure of a former devisee or legatee by incapacity or unwillingness to accept, or after him. Burrill.