Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Potency.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Power; potency.
- n. In heraldry: A bearing of the shape of a capital T—that is, a cross tau.
- n. The termination of an ordinary or other bearing when of that form.
- n. In watch-making, the counter-bridge to the main cock or bridge on the top plate of a watch, holding the jeweling for the balance-staff, cylinder, or verge.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. rare Potency; capacity.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the state of being potent; a male's capacity to have sexual intercourse
Etymologies
- From Old French potence ("power, a crutch"), from Latin potentia ("power, in Medieval Latin also crutch"), from potens ("powerful"); see potent. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“A quoi bon une potence en or si c'est vous que l'on va pendre ?”
““If he is left to my disposal,” said the King, “I will at least give him one lesson in the science of heraldry, in which he is so ignorant — only explain to him practically the meaning of a cross potence, with a noose dangling proper.””
“The potence of personality is certainly incalculable.”
“Sometimes the inferior power emanates in its totality from the superior, in which case the entire potence of the former is founded upon the potence of the latter, so that obedience is due to the higher at all times and without exceptions.”
“There is a whole fabric of toxic assumptions built into the implicit idea that there is a sliding scale of sexual potence and vitality with Black men at one end and Asian men at the other with whites in between.”
More Racist and Inappropriate Comments Directed at Interracial Relationships
“The fact that a Republican House gave him omni-potence last Fall to do what the hell he wants, without consultation, and certainly without having to justify anything to the millions of Americans taking to the streets (what he calls a focus group) is proof positive the system is broken.”
“I have long been convinced of the eventual omnipotence of mind over matter; adequacy of motive is sufficient to anything, & my golden age is when the present potence will become omnipotence: this will be the millenium [sic] of Xtians 'when the lion shall lay down with the lamb'.”
“It's as if C.L. Moore had tried to do a story dealing with Northwest Smith's fear of im-potence.”
“The potence of her attraction lay in her not being English in her being, not only Margey, but Cathay, far Cathay.”
“Other Mu ` ta - zilites, rejecting this view as a denial of divine omni - potence, held that God has the power to perform unjust acts, but in fact never does.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘potence’.
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Deprefixed words
A list of words you more frequently hear used with prefixes than without.
clement, witting, ravel, whelm, fettered, licit, couth, bridled, wieldy, kempt, ingenuous, iterate and 116 more...
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Strength, Force or Power
Words meaning strength, force or power
pollency, potency, potence, potentiality, sthenia, vim, vis, vigor
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Historical Military Terms of Interest
Many (if not all) of these terms were selected from A pocket dictionary, for military officers, containing a definition of all the tactical terms now in use, with other matter belonging to the art ...
zig-zags, yeoman, xerxes, xeiff, xenophon, worm, watch-word, windage, wheeling, wad-hock, wadding, volley and 242 more...
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vampires
brujah, nosferatu, ventrue, toreador, malkavian, gangrel, tremere, lasombra, setite, ravnos, sabbat, camarilla and 7 more...
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Ugly Words
hoary, coarse, ignoramus, gout, visceral, writhe, shriek, sour, move, unctuous, psoriasis, echinacea and 66 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for potence.
chained_bear "fr. troops are ranged en potence, when any part of a line is thrown forward or backward, so as to form a right angle with the remaining part of the line. When a potence is formed on both flanks of the line, it is called the double potence." (citation in list description) Oct 9, 2008