impotent

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English impotent,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French impotent (“powerless, weak”)^[4][5][6][2] and directly borrowed from Latin impotēns (“powerless, lacking self-control”),^[7][8][9] formed from in- (“not”) and potēns (“powerful”), the source of potent.^[6][4][10] The Latin participle belongs to possum (“to be able, be powerful”), a contraction of potis (“powerful, able”) with the verb for "to be", and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *poti- (“powerful; lord”).^[4] The OED, in its 2023 revision, records the French word in 1319 for lacking physical strength, in the 14th century for being incapable, and in 1480 for being unable to have intercourse or children.^[7] The Anglo-Norman word, also spelled empotent, is recorded from the second half of the 14th century.^[11] Compare Catalan impotent and Spanish impotente (14th century), Italian impotente (1342), Portuguese impotente (1563) and German impotent (1522).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Physically weak or frail, especially through age: before 1393, in Gower's Confessio Amantis, where the speaker says "for my daies olde, That y am feble and impotent".^[2][7][5] Etymonline dates the word to the late 14th century.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word was used above all of the old, the sick and the crippled: a petition of 1434 describes "an aged man, [i]npotent and sike", and a Stratford guild register of 1443 speaks of "the pore pepull and Impotent".^[2] Johnson (1755) still gave "disabled by nature or disease" as a separate sense, quoting the "impotent folk" of John 5,^[12] but the OED now calls the physical sense rare.^[7] The wider sense of having no power to do something begins with people too old to work, in the Rolls of Parliament for 1437,^[7][2] and by 1533, in T. More's Answere to Poysened Booke, it could also mean lacking force or substance, inadequate.^[7] Sexual incapacity was already a sense of the word in post-classical Latin, from the 10th century.^[7] In English it appears in the mid-15th century,^[4][5][2] and Etymonline notes that Middle English also had a native word for it, cunt-beaten.^[4] The Latin sense "without self-control, violent" was taken up from 1539 for unrestrained emotions and for people carried away by them, in Spenser, Massinger, Dryden and Pope among others, and died out around 1800.^[7][4] As a noun the word meant helplessness in a single text of about 1450, and an impotent person from before 1475;^[7][2] the impotent as a class of people is recorded from the mid-18th century.^[13]

Timeline

• before 1393 – physically weak or frail.^[7][2][5]
• 1437 – unable to do something, powerless.^[7][2]
• before 1444 – sexually powerless, in Lydgate's writings.^[5] The Middle English Dictionary's quotation from Lydgate is dated before 1450,^[2] and the OED's first quotation about 1475.^[7]
• c. 1450 – noun, helplessness (obsolete).^[7][2]
• before 1475 – noun, a weak or powerless person.^[7]
• 1533 – lacking force or substance, feeble.^[7]
• 1539 – of emotions and people, unrestrained (obsolete by 1799).^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Lacking the power or strength to change or control something; powerless, helpless: The council was impotent to stop the closure of the mill.^[14][8][7]
2. Of a man, unable to have sexual intercourse, especially through failure of erection.^[14][8][7]
3. Lacking force or effect; feeble, ineffectual: She answered the insult with impotent rage.^[8][7]
4. (rare) Physically weak, especially through age, illness or injury.^[7][13]
5. (obsolete, 1539–1799) Lacking self-control; unrestrained, carried away by passion.^{[7][14][8][13]}

Noun

1. A person who is impotent; with the, such people as a group.^[7][8][13]

Word family

• impotently
• impotentness

Related words

• impotence
• potent
• potency
• omnipotent
• impotency

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins