How to spell disable

hear itdis·a·ble/dɪs'eɪbəl/verbPrefixes and work

What it means: make unable to perform a certain action

In a sentence: We disable the alarm to stop it from ringing.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as desable or disabel.

Same family: ability, enable, disabled, disabling, enabling. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Disable comes from the prefix 'dis-' meaning 'not' or 'opposite' and the adjective 'able,' so it literally means 'to make not able.' It entered English in the late Middle Ages from Old French forms related to 'desabler,' carrying the sense of taking away someone’s power or capacity.

Patterns it uses: Prefixes keep every letter

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Words like this

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