Other forms: potentials
Potential is what someone could become and has not become yet. The young player everyone says has potential; the damp, dark flat the estate agent insists has potential; the school report saying you are not fulfilling yours.
As an adjective it is commoner still, and there it means possible rather than actual: a potential buyer, a potential problem, potential customers. The noun is uncountable and takes FOR — the potential for growth, the potential for disaster — while a person simply has potential, with no preposition at all. The fixed phrases are reach your full potential, live up to your potential, untapped potential. Physics keeps its own sense in potential energy: what a thing holds because of where it is, a brick on a shelf waiting to fall. Note that potential is neutral about outcome — a potential disaster is a disaster that may yet happen, not a promising one.
1nounpotentialAbility or quality that exists but has not yet been developed.~2%
“The coach saw potential in her from the first training session.”
2adjectivepossiblePossible; able to become so, but not so yet.~61%
“They interviewed three potential candidates.”
synonyms: possible, prospective, likely
3nounphysicsIn physics, the energy stored in something because of its position, or the electrical level at a point.~37%
“A stretched spring stores potential energy.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Latin potentia meant power, from potens, 'powerful', and potentialis was the adjective built on it. Potential is power that has not been spent — the same root that gives potent, impotent and omnipotent.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁es-
Latin
potentialis
English, today
potential
Built from
From Latin potentialis, from Latin potentia (“power”), from potens (“powerful”). by surface analysis, potent + -ial.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA