impairment

Other forms of impairment

plural

impairments·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about impairment

What does impairment mean?

impairment means "the occurrence of a change for the worse". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in impairment?

impairment has 3 syllables: im-pair-ment. The stress falls on "pair". In IPA it is /ˌɪmˈpɛɹmənt/.

What is another word for impairment?

Close synonyms include damage, harm, deterioration, disability, disablement. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is impairment a common word?

impairment is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.