Is disabled disabled?

In HTML boolean attributes can be set on elements without a value. For instance, an option of a select could be selected using <option value='1' selected>, a checkbox could be checked using <input type='checkbox' checked>.

In XHTML attributes are not allowed without a value, as that is not valid XML. Attributes are required to be 'unminimized.' E.g. selected becomes selected="selected", checked becomes checked="checked" and disabled becomes disabled="disabled".

Ah. Disabled is disabled? So surely that means the element is enabled? I know it makes perfect sense to keep the standard standard, but surely if you come to XHTML without the historical information and find out that disabled="disabled" means that the element is actually disabled, this just looks plain odd, weird and wrong?