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If the act of deleting is deletion, is there a word for the act of disabling something?

We're extending an existing UI that has buttons such as Confirm Deletion and Confirm Addition and are stuck on what to put for the disable confirmation.

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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You could consider using disabling as its noun.

Actual usage for iPad and iPhone:

For Disabling: Tap “Turn Off” to confirm disabling of the feature

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    I was going to give the same answer so I upvoted. Deleting is a noun too. The suffix -ing is a productive suffix that you can form verbal nouns with.
    – ermanen
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 16:18
  • Thanks @Rathony, seeing it in that context really helped!
    – Chris Haas
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 17:35
  • @ChrisHaas My pleasure. Merry Christmas!
    – user140086
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 17:42
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The noun form of disable is disablement. Note that gerunds can also be used as nouns if there's not a noun form of the verb.

All three of Confirm Disable, Confirm Disabling and Confirm Disablement would be understood. The last two sound better to me.

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  • To me as an ESL person, Disablement sounds very odd :)
    – Andrey
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 22:46
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"Confirm Disable," while not elegant would certainly be understood by your reader/user.

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  • IMO this is much more intuitive than "Confirm Disabling" and much less clunky than "Confirm Disablement".
    – kdbanman
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 21:32
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    Thank you. My intention was to keep it short to better match with "Confirm Deletion" and "Confirm Addition."
    – Mark Hubbard
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 21:39

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