potency

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin potentia (“power, influence, ability, efficacy”),^[2][3][4][5] from potēns (“powerful, potent”), with the noun suffix -ia.^[2][6][4] Etymonline traces the adjective to potis (“powerful, able, capable”), from Proto-Indo-European *poti- (“powerful; lord”).^[3] In post-classical Latin the noun also meant potentiality, from the 4th century, and a force or body of men.^[2] The OED compares potencia, and the English suffix -ency.^[2] The word is related to potent, potence and potential.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Power or powerfulness; the ability to bring something about; authority or influence: before 1500, in a translation of the Secreta Secretorum composed about 1450.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to the mid-15th century,^[3] the Shorter Oxford to late Middle English,^[5] and Dictionary.com to 1530–40.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From the general sense of power, the word was applied in the 17th century to the strength with which a drink or drug acts on the body (1637)^[2][8] and to a power in the political sense, a person or body that wields influence (about 1607, now rare).^[2] Milton's Areopagitica (1644) has it for potentiality, a capacity to develop or to become something,^[2][8] a sense the American Heritage Dictionary still gives.^[9] The sexual sense, a man's ability to perform intercourse, is recorded from 1739, the opposite of impotence.^[2][8] Later technical uses followed in homeopathy (1846), pharmacology (1902), mathematics (1904), embryology (1908) and genetics (1916).^[2][8] Johnson (1755) gave "power; influence" first, with quotations from Shakespeare's Coriolanus.^[10]

Timeline

• before 1500 – power, ability to effect something; authority.^[2]
• c. 1607 – a person or body wielding power.^[2]
• 1637 – the strength of a drink or drug.^[2][8]
• 1644 – potentiality, capacity to develop.^[2][8]
• 1739 – male sexual ability; virility.^[2][8]
• 1846 – in homeopathy, the degree of dilution of a remedy.^[2][8]
• 1902 – in pharmacology, the strength of a drug.^[2][8]
• 1908 – in embryology, a capacity for differentiation.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Power, force or influence; the quality of being potent: the potency of a slogan.^[6][9][2]
2. The strength of a drug, poison or drink, especially as measured by the dose needed for an effect.^[2][6]
3. A man's ability to have sexual intercourse; virility.^[2][6]
4. Potentiality; an inborn capacity for growth and development.^[9][2]
5. In embryology, the ability of a cell or tissue to develop into particular kinds of tissue.^[2][6]
6. (rare) A person or body that wields power.^[2][6]

Word family

• prepotency
• subpotency

Related words

• potence
• potent
• potentate
• potential
• potentiality
• impotent
• impotence

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
9. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.