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IMPOTENT
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Lacking power or ability
Example:
felt impotent rage
Classified under:
Similar:
effete (deprived of vigor and the ability to be effective)
ineffective; ineffectual; unable (lacking in power or forcefulness)
impuissant (lacking physical strength or vigor)
Also:
infertile; sterile; unfertile (incapable of reproducing)
powerless (lacking power)
Attribute:
effectiveness; potency; strength (capacity to produce strong physiological or chemical effects)
Antonym:
potent (having a strong physiological or chemical effect)
Derivation:
impotence; impotency (the quality of lacking strength or power; being weak and feeble)
Sense 2
Meaning:
(of a male) unable to copulate
Classified under:
Antonym:
potent ((of a male) capable of copulation)
Derivation:
impotence; impotency (an inability (usually of the male animal) to copulate)
Context examples:
Not a tear rose to Burns' eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness, that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I was for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Hump, he said slowly, you can’t do it. You are not exactly afraid. You are impotent. Your conventional morality is stronger than you.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
