IMPOTENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does impotent mean? 

• IMPOTENT (adjective)
  The adjective IMPOTENT has 2 senses:

1. lacking power or ability

2. (of a male) unable to copulate

  Familiarity information: IMPOTENT used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMPOTENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lacking power or ability

Context example:

felt impotent rage

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

Antonym:

potent ((of a male) capable of copulation)

Derivation:

impotence; impotency (an inability (usually of the male animal) to copulate)

 Context examples 

"Nothing, indeed," thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and hastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Leach’s rage was no longer impotent.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

"Oh! You drive me mad!" She sprang to her feet, wringing her hands in impotent wrath. "You never used to be this way."

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I felt impotent, and in the dark, and distrustful.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

In a minute they were feathered with them, and yet with no sign of pain they clawed and slobbered with impotent rage at the steps which would lead them to their victims, mounting clumsily up for a few yards and then sliding down again to the ground.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was not merely that his own fortunes were largely at stake, but it was the dreadful position in which he would stand before this immense concourse of people, many of whom had put their money upon his judgment, if he should find himself at the last moment with an impotent excuse instead of a champion to put before them.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was amazed, how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof, he said, some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Leach had worked himself into an ecstasy of impotent rage.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

And the woman, leaning against the bunk, raging and impotent, watched herself weighed out in yellow dust and nuggets in the scales erected on the grub-box.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)