Impairment

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Impairment \Im*pair"ment\, n. [OE. enpeirement, OF. empirement.]
     The state, act, or process of being impaired; injury. "The
     impairment of my health." --Dryden.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:



  impairment
       n 1: the occurrence of a change for the worse [syn: {damage}, {harm}]
       2: a symptom of reduced quality or strength [syn: {deterioration}]
       3: the condition of being unable to perform as a consequence of
          physical or mental unfitness; "reading disability";
          "hearing impairment" [syn: {disability}, {disablement}, {handicap}]
       4: damage that results in a reduction of strength or quality
       5: the act of making something futile and useless (as by
          routine) [syn: {stultification}, {constipation}, {deadening}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  72 Moby Thesaurus words for "impairment":
     adulteration, attrition, curtailment, cut, cutting, damage,
     debilitation, decrease, decrement, defectibility, defectiveness,
     deficiency, depletion, depreciation, derogation, deterioration,
     detraction, detriment, diminution, dip, disadvantage,
     disparagement, drawback, enfeeblement, erroneousness, extraction,
     fallibility, faultiness, flaw, handicap, harm, hurt, immaturity,
     imperfection, impurity, inaccuracy, inadequacy, inadequateness,
     incompleteness, inexactitude, inexactness, injury, lack, lessening,
     liability, loss, loss of ground, marring, mediocrity, mischief,
     patchiness, prejudice, reduction, remission, retraction,
     retrenchment, shortage, shortcoming, shortening, shrinkage,
     sketchiness, step backward, truncation, undermining, undevelopment,
     unevenness, unperfectedness, unsoundness, vitiation, want,
     weakening, worsening