impotence
(ˈɪmpətəns)
Also 5 -in, ym-.
[a. F. impotence (13th c.) = Sp. impotencia, It. impotenzia, ad. L. impotentia (see next).]
1. Want of strength or power to perform anything; utter inability or weakness; helplessness.
| a 1420 Hoccleve De Reg. Princ. 4654 Hir [= their] impotence Strecchiþ naght so fer as his influence. 1614 Bp. Hall Recoll. Treat. 1036 Ready to cast imputations of levity, or impotence upon God. 1656 Hobbes Lib., Necess. & Chance (1841) 368 A sick or lame man's liberty to go..is an impotence, and not a power or a liberty. 1671 Milton Samson 52 O impotence of mind, in body strong! 1788 Gibbon Decl. & F. xliii. (1869) II. 612 Every accident betrayed the impotence of the government. 1851 Jerrold St. Giles xiv. 143 The old man..wrung his hands in the very impotence of sorrow. 1870 Swinburne Ess. & Stud. (1875) 267 Alike by his powers and his impotences, by his capacity and his defect, Coleridge was inapt for dramatic poetry. |
2. Want of physical power; feebleness of body, as through illness or old age.
| 1406 Hoccleve La male regle 443 As I saide, reewe on myn impotence, Þat likly am to sterue yit or eeue. c 1445 Lydg. Test. in Min. Poems (Percy Soc.) 246 He can no moor diffence, Than crokyd age in his moost impotence. 1483 Caxton Gold. Leg. 99 b/1 It happed that two of them..a brother and a suster cam to y[m]potence. 1602 Shakes. Ham. ii. ii. 66 Greeued, That so his Sicknesse, Age, and Impotence Was falsely borne in hand. a 1674 Milton Hist. Mosc. i, Any rich man who through age or other impotence is unable to serve the Public. 1836 H. Coleridge North. Worthies (1852) I. 21 Which [chronic diseases] slowly but surely reduce the body politic to a condition of impotence and dotage. |
b. Path. Complete absence of sexual power: usually said of the male.
| 1655 Fuller Ch. Hist. ii. vi. §17 Whilest Papists crie up this his incredible Continency: others easily unwonder the same, by imputing it partly to his Impotence, afflicted with an Infirmitie. 1798 Malthus Popul. iii. ii. (1806) II. 111 Is it some mysterious interference of Heaven which..strikes the men with impotence and the women with barrenness? 1833–58 Copland Dict. Pract. Med. II. 319/2 Impotence may exist in either sex, but most commonly in the male. |
† 3. Lack of self-restaint, violent passion. Obs.
| 1634 Massinger Very Woman ii. i, The being your sister would anew inflame me With much more impotence to doat upon her. 1667 Milton P.L. ii. 156 Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, Be ike through impotence, or unaware? 1715–20 Pope Iliad xxiv. 53 The dire Achilles..A lion, not a man, who slaughters wide In strength of rage and impotence of pride. |