IMPOTENCE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Impotence

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/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.

See images of 'Impotence'

Etymology of 'Impotence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Impotence" Quotes from Famous Books

... while the Bill was reasonable and there was no reasonable doubt of the power of Congress to enact it, yet the attempt to pass it, if it were to fail, would do the cause infinite mischief. It would be an exhibition of impotence, always injurious to a political party. It would drive back into the Democratic Party many men who were afraid of negro domination; who looked with great dislike on the assertion of National power over elections, and whom other considerations would induce to act with the Republicans. ...

— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... himself the impotence of the private member. He had, as we have seen, been elected to Parliament by South Salford in 1906 as a Liberal. In Parliament he proposed a measure for the publication of the names of subscribers to ...

— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... reach a billet of wood beside his bunk. He struck at Bull's head with it, but the stick was brushed out of his palsied fingers with a single gesture, and, while Uncle Bill groaned with fury and impotence, Bull continued the task of preparing him for bed. He straightened the old body of the terrible Campbell; he heated water in the tub and washed away stains and dirt; he took off the stained bandages and replaced them ...

— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... limited to a week, or must risk suspicion by staying. Dollmann was away (according to von Brning), 'would probably be back soon'; but how soon? Beyond Norderney lay Memmert. How to probe its secret? The ardour it had roused in me was giving way to a mortifying sense of impotence. The sight of the Kormoran, with her crew preparing for sea, was a pointed comment on my diplomacy, and most of all on my ridiculous survey of the dykes. When all was said and done we were protgs of von Brning, and dogged by Grimm. Was it likely they ...

— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... toward her by a strong impulse of his heart and body. He would have liked to squeeze her, strangle her, eat her, make her part of himself. And he trembled with impotence, impatience, rage, to think she did not belong to him entirely, as ...

— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

More quotes...