A friend used this word in writing to me; and when I asked about it, I was told it had been more or less transliterated as a guess.
So--who knows what it means...without looking it up?

HINT: People like convention planners and travel agents use this term all the time ... probably as a way of making their art look so arcane that mere mortals will not be tempted to do for themselves what these planners and agents do for a fee.

did your friend use it in a legal sense or in a gereralized sense?

Generalized; specifically using the example of waiting and waiting for a bus, then 3 or so all come at once. Interesting, since I went to catch a bus this afternoon, and found two buses halted at the stop!

Well, I had to look it up because I'd never heard or read the word. It wasn't included anywhere on onelook.com (that's over 900 online references that don't list it), so then I tried 'ponibility' and got a definition, albeit an obsolete one.

Then there is 'dispone' listed on brainydictionary. com, but that could be a stretch to connect it even to ponibility. And corn pones, but I become absurd.

FWIW, the Port. disponibilidade (and, I suspect, Sp. disponibilidad) means "availability."

That at least is understandable; more so than what my friend found in the OED:
disponi'bility, capability of being disponed; condition of being at one’s disposal.

>condition of being at one’s disposal. [OED]

so weren't any of those bussses[sic] at your disposal, Ms. J?

Okay, enough with the hinting already.

Hoteliers use the term disponibility to refer to the number of rooms which can be made available to a large gathering. It works like this: total number of rooms in the hotel minus those committed to other people at the time of the planned event = disponibility. Something like that, anyway.

Disponibilité means availability in French.

It is just so strange that this word is used by hoteliers, yet it is not referenced a single time on onelook.com in any of the nearly 1,000 sources. I wonder why not?

>not referenced a single time on onelook.com

I could change this for you..

edit: what was that other hotelier's word that came up here not long ago?

Well, thank goodness for that, tsuwm! And what a service you would be providing for all those hoteliers looking up the correct spelling of disponibility online!

Rack rate?

I just had a browse of Webster's Third New International, and it has..

disponible : capable of being placed, arranged, or disposed of as one wishes : AVAILABLE


edit - yes, rack rate (also rack-rent).

Ah, disponible is listed once on onelook, though disponibility isn't listed at all.

However, here's a cool phrase and definition thereabouts:

"in a restaurant, on a menu, etc: no longer available as a choice Example: Peas are off.
French: ne plus être disponible"