The phrase "ability to mean" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing the capacity or potential of something to convey a particular meaning or significance.
Example: "The ability to mean different things in various contexts is what makes language so rich and complex."
Alternatives: "capacity to signify" or "potential to convey".
An ability to mean different things at different times is, after all, what makes a work of art a classic.
Nora may only have been around for little more than a century but, like Antigone, she is a survivor, because of her ability to mean different things at different times and for different generations.
I'm not talking here about the ambiguity which we generally take as the hallmark of a classic – its ability to mean one thing to one person and another thing to someone else.
On the other hand, Dr. Christ — with a wink to our Socialist Senator Sanders — contorted "ability" to mean "ability to pay". With a clever, learned, and, it must be said, cynical gesture, Dr. Christ has made clear to us the depth of our problem: we have to decide whether eduction is a commodity or a communal resource to be passed from one generation to the next.
Finally, when I talk about Reason I mean the ability to think logically and cogently.
(I confess that I am not sure what "the ability to deliver" means, much less what the cited examples have to do with it.).
To go from ability to disability means that I now experience milestones that take the little things away from me that I always took for granted.
Its ability to latch means it cannot be forced out of a saturated condition by overload, as is the case with the insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT).
The ability to coach means the ability to know, apply and teach effectively.
Having the ability to jump means that future robots will be able to run smoother, and hopefully jump higher than they have been able to in the past.
These former felons in Virginia talked to HuffPost about what the ability to vote meant for them.
