A quirk of the English language. Ability Vs disability

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.

5 points · 4 comments · view on lemmy.world

4 Comments

Lembot_0001@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 1y
[ removed ]
dcoe@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y (2 replies)

“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.

Reverendender@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Also inflammable is NOT the opposite of flammable.

I’ll see myself out…

Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe · 1 pts · 1y

Now flammable and inflammable...

frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1y