Contents -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Mawson, C.O.S., ed. (1870–1938). Roget’s International Thesaurus. 1922.

Class I. Words Expressing Abstract Relations
Section VIII. Causation
2. Connection Between Cause and Effect

158. Impotence.

   NOUN:IMPOTENCE; inability, disability; disablement, impuissance [rare], caducity, imbecility; incapacity, incapability; inaptitude, ineptitude; indocility; invalidity, inefficiency, incompetence, disqualification.
  telum imbelle [L.], brutum fulmen [L.], blank cartridge, flash in the pan, vox et prœterea nihil [L.], dead letter, bit of waste paper, dummy; Quaker gun; cripple.
  INEFFICACY (inutility) [See Inutility]; failure [See Failure].
  HELPLESSNESS &c. adj.; prostration, paralysis, palsy, apoplexy, syncope, sideration [obs.], vincibility, vincibleness, deliquium, collapse, exhaustion, softening of the brain, senility, superannuation, atony, decrepitude, imbecility, neurasthenia, invertebracy, inanition; emasculation, orchotomy; eunuch.
  MOLLYCODDLE, old woman, muff [colloq.], tenderling [rare], milksop, molly [colloq.], sissy [colloq.], mother’s darling.
   VERB:BE IMPOTENT &c. adj.; not have a leg to stand on.
  vouloir rompre l’anguille au genou [F.], vouloir prendre la lune avec les dents [F.].
  COLLAPSE, faint, swoon, fall into a swoon, drop; go by the board; end in smoke (fail) [See Failure].
  RENDER POWERLESS &c. adj.; depotentiate [rare], deprive of power; disable, disenable; disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, disinvigorate [rare], undermine, deaden, cramp, tie the hands; double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple, maim, lame, hamstring, unsinew [rare], draw the teeth of; throttle, strangle, garrote or garrotte, ratten [trade-union cant], silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat [F.], spike the guns; take the wind out of one’s sails, scotch the snake, put a spoke in one’s wheel; break the -neck, – back; unhinge, unfit; put out of gear.
  UNMAN, unnerve, devitalize, effeminize, attenuate, enervate; emasculate, evirate [rare], spay, eunuchize [rare], caponize, castrate, geld, alter.
  SHATTER, exhaust; weaken [See Weakness].
   ADJECTIVE:POWERLESS, impotent, unable, incapable, incompetent; inefficient, ineffective; inept; unfit, unfitted; unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; doddering [colloq.], wambly [Scot. and dial. Eng.], inapt, unapt; crippled, disabled &c. v.; armless; senile, decrepit, superannuated.
  harmless, unarmed, weaponless, defenseless, sine ictu [L.], unfortified, mightless [archaic], indefensible, vincible, pregnable, untenable.
  paralytic, paralyzed; palsied, imbecile; nerveless, sinewless, marrowless, pithless, lustless; emasculate, disjointed; out of joint, out of gear; unnerved, unhinged; water-logged, on one’s beam ends, rudderless; laid on one’s back; done up [colloq.], done for [colloq.], done brown [colloq.], done [colloq.], dead-beat [colloq.], exhausted, shattered, atonic, demoralized; graveled [colloq.] &c. (in difficulty) [See Difficulty]; helpless, unfriended, fatherless; without a leg to stand on, hors de combat [F.], laid on the shelf.
  NUGATORY, null and void, inoperative, good for nothing, invertebrate, ineffectual (failing) [See Failure]; inadequate [See Insufficiency]; inefficacious (useless) [See Inutility].
   QUOTATIONS:

1. Der kranke Mann.
2. Desirous still but impotent to rise.—Shenstone
3. It has been well said that there is no surer way of courting national disaster than to be “opulent, aggressive, and unarmed.”—Roosevelt