Incapacitated

How to spell incapacitated

13 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce incapacitated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does incapacitated mean?

1. adjectiveDeprived of strength, ability, or the legal power to act normally.

Incapacitated in a sentence

• The driver was incapacitated by the crash and could not reach the door.

• A severe migraine left her completely incapacitated for two days.

Where does incapacitated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb capere, meaning 'to take, hold, or contain', which gave rise to the adjective capax 'able to hold much' and the noun capacitas 'roominess, ability'. From capacitas English built the verb 'capacitate', meaning to make capable or to qualify, and then added the negative prefix in- 'not' to form 'incapacitate' in the seventeenth century, literally meaning to render someone or something unable. The participle 'incapacitated' soon settled into legal and medical use to describe a person stripped of strength, fitness, or legal power to act. The very same capere root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'capacity', 'capable', and even 'capture', all sharing the idea of taking or holding. Knowing that the middle of the word is the familiar 'capacit-' of 'capacity' is the best guard against misspelling the unstressed -pac-i- stretch in the middle.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• capacit- (from Latin capacitas: capacity, ability)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ed (past participle)