A quirk of the English language. Ability Vs disability (self.english)

submitted 1 month ago by FundMECFSResearch to c/english@lemmy.ca

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Am I the only one that finds it weird that in English: "your disability got worse" and "your ability got worse" mean the same thing even though the words disability and ability effectively means the opposite thing, ie. Are antonyms.

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[-] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym

[-] dcoe@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

“Ability” and”disability” aren’t opposites. The ability to climb stairs would be lost given the disability of having no legs.

My ability to climb stairs would get worse as I aged. My disability would get worse if I only had one leg and lost a second.

this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025

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