powerlessness

nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — power sits at #300neutral

Powerlessness is the crushing feeling of being unable to change anything. You can see it happening and you cannot stop it.

It is one of the most reliably damaging experiences there is, and research on stress consistently finds that lack of control matters more than workload. It takes in the face of. The word appears in writing about illness, poverty and bureaucracy. Helplessness is the near synonym, and learned helplessness is a specific psychological finding about what happens when nothing you do makes a difference.

Definitions of powerlessness

1nounpowerlessnessThe state of being unable to influence what happens.C2
“There was a real sense of powerlessness in the room.”

Also accepted in games: helplessness

Where it comes from

Middle English
pouerles
English
powerless
English, today
powerlessness

From powerless + -ness. powerless comes from Middle English pouerles, powerles, equivalent to power + -less.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 20 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

powerlessness in the wild

Recurring themes are pointlessness and powerlessness, where good and bad meet in an ungraspable and sometimes deliberately incomprehensible greyscale.
Willy Kyrklund
The Protest Festival of Kristiansand, Norway, is a protest against powerlessness and indifference, in support of commitment and action.
Protestfestival
The song revolves around the story of a girl who is consumed with feelings of loneliness, boredom and powerlessness.
Grey Street (song)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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