Impotence is being unable to act or change anything. Watching a decision you hate get made in a room you were not invited to.
The word has two lives that rarely meet. In writing about power it means helplessness — the impotence of a small country facing a large one, the impotence of a parent watching a grown child make a mistake. In medicine it is the older term for a man's inability to get an erection, now usually called erectile dysfunction. Because of that second sense, writers often reach for powerlessness when they want the first meaning with nothing else attached.
1nounimpotenceComplete powerlessness to act or to change things.
“He felt a growing impotence as the deadline passed.”
formal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
synonyms: powerlessness, helplessness
2nounmedicineIn medicine, a man's inability to achieve an erection.
Latin
impotentia
Middle French
impotence
English, today
impotence
From Middle French impotence, from Latin impotentia.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 23 of A Man Called Ove.
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