IMPOTENCY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Impotency

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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.

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Etymology of 'Impotency'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Impotency" Quotes from Famous Books

... Soon the victim begins to feel the effect of this treatment, and within a few hours becomes insane. To make him lame, it is only necessary to place poison on articles recently touched by his feet. Death or impotency can be produced by placing poison on his garments. A fly is named after a person, and is placed in a bamboo tube. This is set near the fire, and in a short time the victim of the plot is seized with fever. Likewise magical chants and dances, carried on beneath ...

— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... maturity, and remained there sterile like dry bushes on a plot of land exhausted by over-cultivation. And the frightful sadness that one felt arose from the fact that so creative and great a past had culminated in such present-day impotency—Rome, who had covered the world with indestructible monuments, now so reduced that she ...

— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... destruction of every arbitrary power that can separately, secretly and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world, or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at least its reduction to virtual impotency." He declared that the power which had hitherto controlled the German nation was of the sort thus described, and that its alteration actually constituted a condition ...

— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... the sound of the firing, which was receding more and more to the eastward, as a deadly hurricane moves off after having accomplished its disastrous work. With a fierce gesture, expressive of his sense of impotency, General Douay outstretched his arms toward the wide horizon of hill and dale, of woods and fields, and the order went forth to proceed with the march ...

— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... Wellington, the immense concourse of the seditious was placed at the side of the river where they could do least mischief, and the passages of which by the bridges could be easily defended by a small force. The government thus showed the impotency of the chartist party, and its ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

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