Disability

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first appearance of “disability” occurred in the mid-­sixteenth century. Its adjectival form, “disabled,” follows shortly thereafter in the linguistic record. It appears that from the beginning, the three definitions of disability that persist today—­“a lack of ability (to discharge any office or function),” “a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses, or activities,” and “a restriction framed to prevent any person or class of persons from sharing in duties and privileges which would otherwise be open to them”—­coexisted with one another. A now-­obsolete meaning, disability as financial hardship, disappeared from use in the nineteenth century.