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''invalid'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260708194133-00-⌔

invalid - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

invalid (comparative more invalid, superlative most invalid)

  • Not valid; not true, correct, acceptable, or appropriate.
    • ✤ Synonyms: disallowed, nonvalid
    • ✤ Antonym: valid
    • ✤ Your argument is invalid because it uses circular reasoning.
    • ✤ This invalid contract cannot be legally enforced.

Noun

invalid (plural invalids)

  • (dated, sometimes offensive) Any person with a disability or illness.
  • (dated, sometimes offensive) A person who is confined to home or bed because of illness, disability or injury; one who is too sick or weak to care for themselves.
  • (archaic) A disabled member of the armed forces; one unfit for active duty due to injury.

Adjective

invalid (not comparable)

  • Suffering from disability or illness.
    • ✤ Invalidism therefore referred to a lack of power as well as a tendency toward illness. It is for this reason that I choose to discuss the invalid woman rather than just the ill one.1
  • Intended for use by an invalid.

Verb

invalid (third-person singular simple present invalids, present participle invaliding, simple past and past participle invalided)

  • (UK, transitive) To exempt from (often military) duty because of injury or ill health.
    • ✤ He was invalided home after the car crash.
    • ✤ [Blackadder:] Right, Baldrick, this is an old trick I picked up in the Sudan. We tell HQ that I’ve gone insane, and I’ll be invalided back to Blighty before you can say “wibble” — a poor, gormless idiot.2
    • ✤ The Japanese armored cruiser Nisshin has been hit badly. Shells have sheared off several main guns and virtually disarmed the vessel. In the middle of all this, one Ensign Isoroku Yamamoto loses two fingers to the remains of an explosion. If he’d lost a third, he would’ve been invalided out of military service. Thus, by the retention of a single digit would there be rather large consequences a few decades later on down the line.3
  • (transitive) To make invalid or affect with disease.

Etymology 1

From in- + valid.

Pronunciation

  • enPR: ĭn-vă’lĭd, IPA: /ɪnˈvæl.ɪd/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Middle French invalide, from Latin invalidus (“infirm, weak”), from in- (“not”) + validus (“strong”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: ĭn′və-lĭd, ĭn′və-lēd′, IPA: /ˈɪn.və.lɪd/, /ˈɪn.vəˌliːd/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-07-08.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 2000, Diane Price Herndl, * Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840-1940*, University of North Carolina Press, →ISBN, page 1: ↩

  2. 1989 November 2, Richard Curtis, Ben Elton, “Goodbyeee”, in Blackadder Goes Forth: ↩

  3. 2019 September 18, Drachinifel, 26:33 from the start, in Battle of Tsushima - When the 2nd Pacific Squadron thought it couldn’t get any worse… ‎, archived from the original on 4 December 2022: ↩

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