Enabling

How to spell enabling

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce enabling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does enabling mean?

1. verbGiving someone or something the means, authority, or capacity to do a particular thing.
2. adjectiveDescribing legislation that confers a power or authority to act.
3. adjectiveDescribing behaviour that unintentionally allows another person's destructive habit, such as addiction, to continue.

Enabling in a sentence

• verb

  The new portal is enabling staff to book leave online.

• adjective

  Parliament passed the enabling act that gave regulators new powers.

• adjective

  The counsellor warned that covering his debts was enabling behaviour.

• verb

  Enabling remote access cut the team's travel costs sharply.

• adjective

  An enabling clause in the contract let the firm subcontract the work.

• adjective

  Her enabling pattern kept shielding her brother from any consequences.

Where does enabling come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'enable', which English assembled in the late 1400s from the prefix 'en-', meaning 'to make' or 'to cause to be', joined to the adjective 'able'. 'Able' itself reached English through Old French from the Latin habilis, which literally meant 'easy to handle' or 'fit', and that adjective grew from the verb habere, 'to have or to hold'. So at its root 'enabling' carries the sense of giving something the capacity to be held or handled, that is, making it workable. The same habere family gives us 'habit', 'habitat' and 'ability', all sharing the idea of holding or possessing. The spelling trap is the silent 'e' of 'able', which is dropped when '-ing' is added, so the word keeps a single 'l' and never doubles it.

How the word is built

• en- (to make or cause to be)
• able (fit, capable, from Latin habilis)
• -ing (present participle suffix)