as in inability
the lack of sufficient ability, power, or means
her entrenched incapacity for decision-making doesn't make her a very good boss
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Recent Examples of incapacity
The President’s ironclad hegemony had become a pathetic circus of blunders until the IMF deal, threatening to prove campaign predictions of amateurism and incapacity to govern true, just as the campaign for the midterm elections gets under way.
—
Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes.com, 20 Apr. 2025
The conjunction of crushing needs and the state's incapacity created fertile ground for NGOs: even before the quake, there were around 10,000 of them in the country.
—Paul Collier, Foreign Affairs, 1 Sep. 2011
But that has historically been interpreted as misconduct or incapacity, not policy disagreements.
—Nik Popli, Time, 17 Apr. 2025
Vargas Llosa, who died in Lima this past weekend at the age of 89, nurtured a lifelong obsession with his native Peru: its corrupt political ecosystem, its inequality, its incapacity to make good on its promise.
—Ilan Stavans, The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for incapacity
Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes.com, 20 Apr. 2025
The conjunction of crushing needs and the state's incapacity created fertile ground for NGOs: even before the quake, there were around 10,000 of them in the country.
—Paul Collier, Foreign Affairs, 1 Sep. 2011
But that has historically been interpreted as misconduct or incapacity, not policy disagreements.
—Nik Popli, Time, 17 Apr. 2025
Vargas Llosa, who died in Lima this past weekend at the age of 89, nurtured a lifelong obsession with his native Peru: its corrupt political ecosystem, its inequality, its incapacity to make good on its promise.
—Ilan Stavans, The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for incapacity
Recent Examples of Synonyms for incapacity
inability
Noun
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Indeed, the root cause of the Iberian grid’s failure on a clear, windy day when 70% of Spain’s generation capacity was coming from renewables was the Spanish grid’s inability to gracefully handle such a surplus of renewables generation.—
Erik Kobayashi-Solomon,
Forbes.com,
8 June 2025
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Could his inability to execute be a product of pitching deep into most of his 11 starts to begin the season?—
Matt Gelb,
New York Times,
6 June 2025
Cite this Entry
“Incapacity.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/incapacity. Accessed 18 Jun. 2025.
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