IMPOTENCE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Impotence

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/ˈɪmpətəns/ Listen

noun

Impotency, Impotence n.

The quality or condition of being impotent; lack of strength or power, animal, intellectual, or moral; weakness; feebleness; inability; imbecility. "Some were poor by impotency of nature; as young fatherless children, old decrepit persons, idiots, and cripples." "O, impotence of mind in body strong!"

Lack of self-restraint or self-control. (R.)

(Law & Med.) Lack of procreative power; inability to copulate, or beget children; also, sometimes, sterility; barrenness; specifically, in males: The inability to achieve or sustain a penile erection; erectile dysfunction.

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Etymology of 'Impotence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Impotence" Quotes from Famous Books

... was forgotten. The French again became the objects of the admiration and sympathy of the radical party in Germany, and the spirit of opposition, here and there demonstrated in the German chambers, gave rise, notwithstanding its impotence, to precautionary measures on the part of the federative governments. In the winter of 1819, a German federative congress, of which Prince Metternich was the grand motor, assembled at Vienna for the purpose, after the utter annihilation of the patriots, of finally checking the future ...

— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... education, which the examination system tends to intensify, one of the greatest is that of starving the child's activities, of making him helpless, apathetic, and inert. Original sin finds its equivalent, in the sphere of mental action, in original impotence and stupidity. It is not in the child to direct his steps, and the teacher must therefore direct them for him, and, if necessary, support him with both hands while he makes them. Even if the outward results which are the goal of the teacher's ambition were to be produced ...

— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... radical heresy; this time the victory appears to me more certain, since my opponents and my former companions in arms again call into use against it the same artifices of reactionary opposition, whose impotence I had already established on a narrower battle-field, but one where the conflict was neither less keen ...

— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... that the executioner might twist his limbs and tear out his vitals! He was to walk into a court of his own accord that he might be torn by the practised skill of a professional tormentor, that he might be forced to give up the very secrets of his soul in his impotence;—or else to live amidst the obloquy of all men. He asked himself whether he had deserved it, and in that moment of time he assured himself that he had not deserved such punishment as this. If not altogether innocent, if not white as snow, ...

— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... is occasioned by so general a Folly, that it is wonderful one could so long overlook it. But this false Gallantry proceeds from an Impotence of Mind, which makes those who are guilty of it incapable of pursuing what they themselves approve. Many a Man wishes a Woman his Wife whom he dares not take for such. Tho no one has Power over his Inclinations or Fortunes, ...

— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

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