How to handle checkbox actions in a table component?

[aphilop]

Problem description
There are cases where items in a table cannot be deleted because they are in "use", e.g. a thesaurus item cannot be deleted because it is used in various templates. It is not obvious to the users why these items cannot be selected. Moreover, just disabling the item might be working for the "delete" actions but in cases we have more actions available on the items, this concept does not scale.
We need a better and more usable way to handle these situations, making transparent to the users what they can and cannot do and why.