noun
definition
One who is morally or mentally weak or inefficient; an imbecile; a simpleton.
adjective
definition
Not capable (of doing something); unable.
example
A pint glass is incapable of holding more than a pint of liquid.
definition
Not in a state to receive; not receptive; not susceptible; not able to admit.
example
incapable of pain, or pleasure; incapable of stain or injury
Examples of incapable in a Sentence
Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word.
This time, he wasn't a fever-riddled man incapable of defending her.
Even if he was incapable of feeling real pain.
She'd been incapable of empathy or remorse.
He was incapable, obstinate and perfectly selfish.
They pick up superficial acquirements with astonishing ease, but seem to be incapable of mastering any subject.
But the economic and financial situation was one of almost hopeless embarrassment and confusion, and Pellegrini proved himself incapable of grappling with it.
At first, too, it seemed as if the government were incapable of coping with him.
His eldest son was incapable, haughty and exceedingly corrupt.
An unbaptized person is also incapable of valid ordination.
His life thenceforward became more and more secluded, and he gradually became incapable of work.
He was not incapable of affection nor without generous impulses, but he was flighty, passionate in a childish way, and when angry capable of cruelty.
He regarded mankind as sinful, guilty, ruined, incapable of any good.
Harley by this time was losing influence and was becoming chronically incapable of any sustained effort.
He was the creature of every passing mood or whim, incapable of cool and steady judgment or of the slightest self-control - an incalculable weathercock, blindly obsequious to every blast of passion.
Wherever the base of a puddle wall cannot be worked into a continuous bed of clay or shale, or tied into a groove cut in sound rock free from water-hearing fissures, the safest course is to base it on an artificial material at once impermeable and incapable of erosion, interposed between the rock and the puddled clay.
But he was constitutionally incapable of keeping a promise or paying a debt.
He had shown himself so incapable and apathetic that his followers were sick of fighting for such a despicable master.
When the donor becomes mentally incapable, the attorney cannot just go ahead and act on the donor's behalf.
You can specify that the EPA can only come into effect once you become mentally incapable.
The argument was also put forward that children are psychologically incapable of repentance and faith.
I seem totally incapable of making my brain function at a rapid pace.
And yet this hopeless, incapable junkie has taken up permanent residency in the media.
He was characterized by an absolutely fearless honesty, which sometimes gave offence, but at the basis of his nature there was a warm, tender and sympathetic heart, incapable of meanness or intrigue.
This is the highest order of asceticism, members of which are supposed to be solely engaged in meditating on the Brahma, and to be" equally indifferent to pleasure or pain, insensible of heat or cold, and incapable of satiety or want."Some of them go about naked, but the majority are clad like the Dandis.
Why, then, should the right to decide ecclesiastical disputes be taken away from their own highly competent fellow-countrymen, and reserved for a set of incapable judges in a foreign land?
A number of victims were brought to the scaffold, and Catholics were declared incapable of sitting in either house of parliament.
Roman Catholics and all concerned in the Irish rebellion were permanently disfranchised and declared incapable of sitting in parliament, and those who had taken part in the war against the parliament were condemned to a similar disability during the first four parliaments.
A speculative construction of religion was abhorrent to him, a thing of which he seems to have thought the human mind naturally incapable.
The fundamental doctrine of this work is that, on the hypothesis of free competition, exchange value is determined by the labour expended in production, - a proposition not new, nor, except with considerable limitation and explanation, true, and of little practical use, as "amount of labour" is a vague expression, and the thing intended is incapable of exact estimation.
Shortly it may be said that he was essentially a mass of contradictions - brilliant, passionate to the point of mania, but utterly weak and unstable, capable of developing into a saint or a monster, but quite incapable of becoming an ordinary human being.
On the one hand, soul is corporeal, else it would have no real existence, would be incapable of extension in three dimensions (and therefore of equable diffusion all over the body), incapable of holding the body together, as the Stoics contended that it does, herein presenting a sharp contrast to the Epicurean tenet that it is the body which confines and shelters the light vagrant atoms of soul.
If the above-mentioned condition be not satisfied, the triangle is imaginary, and the three fluids cannot rest in contact, the two weaker tensions, even if acting in full concert, being incapable of balancing the strongest.
The Nitro-bacteria are smaller, finer and quite different from the nitroso-bacteria, and are incapable of attacking and utilizing ammonium carbonate.
The court was far in advance of the people, and the persecuting laws were in large part incapable of execution.
Abbesses have a right to demand absolute obedience of their nuns, over whom they exercise discipline, extending even to the power of expulsion, subject, however, to the bishop. As a female an abbess is incapable of performing the spiritual functions of the priesthood belonging to an abbot.
In 450 Theodosius II., the incapable emperor of the East, died, and his throne was occupied by a veteran soldier named Marcian, who answered the insulting message of Attila in a manlier tone than his predecessor.
But Maximilian was incapable of defending her, and in 1491 the young duchess found herself compelled to treat with Charles VIII.
His intellect, indeed, was not incapable of understanding and admiring the majestic edifice of Roman law; but he shrank with disgust from the illiberal technicalities of practice.
Officers and servants are prohibited from being concerned or interested in any bargain or contract made with their council, and from receiving under cover of their office or employment any fee or reward whatsoever other than their proper salaries, wages and allowances, under penalty of being rendered incapable of holding office under any district council, and of a pecuniary penalty of £50.
His assertion that the Celtic race was incapable of assimilating the highest forms of civilization excited "violent disgust," but the Enquiry was twice reprinted, in 1794 and 1814, and is still of value for the documents embodied in it.
Vendome, however, was recalled, and La Feuillade (who succeeded him) was incapable of long arresting the progress of such a commander as Eugene.
If such a dam is sufficiently strong, and is built upon sound and moderately rough rock, it will always be incapable of sliding.
Assuming also that it is incapable of crushing under its own weight and the pressure of the water, it must, in order to fail entirely, turn over on its outer toe, or upon the outer face at some higher level.
As Jacobi starts with the doctrine that thought is partial and limited, applicable only to connect facts, but incapable of explaining their existence, it is evident that for him any demonstrative system of metaphysic which should attempt to subject all existence to the principle of logical ground must be repulsive.
This brought them within the sphere of reflection, and gave as their guarantee the impossibility of thinking them reversed; and led to their being regarded as wholly relative to human intelligence, restricted to the sphere of the phenomenal, incapable of revealing to us substantial reality - necessary, yet subjective.
Yet lom 978 to 991 no irreparable harm came to England; the machinery for government and defence which his ancestors had establshed seemed fairly competent to defend the realm even under a wayward and incapable king.
Unfortunately for England the kingly power was in the hands of an incapable holder, and feudal anarchy found a plausible mask by adopting the disguise of loyalty to the rightful heiress.
For that very reason it was lacking in strength and unity of purpose, and proved lamentably incapable of dealing with the problems of the moment.
Lancasters ad parlia- herents were turned out of the council; the persons meat of condemned in 1376 were declared incapable of serving in it; Alice Perrers was sentenced to banishment and forfeiture, and the little king was made to re pudiate the declaration whereby his uncle had quashed the statutes of 1376 by declaring that no act of parliament can be repealed save with parliaments consent.