Impotent

Impotent - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

IM'POTENT, a. [L. impotens.]

1. Weak; feeble; wanting strength or power; unable by nature, or disabled by disease or accident to perform any act.

I know thou wast not slow to hear,

Nor impotent to save.

2. Wanting the power of propagation, as males.

3. Wanting the power of restraint; not having the command over; as impotent of tongue.

IM'POTENT, n. One who is feeble, infirm, or languishing under disease.

im'-po-tent (astheneo, adunatos): The verb signifies "to be without strength," and derivatives of it are used in Joh 5:3,7 the King James Version and Ac 4:9 to characterize the paralyzed man at Bethesda and the cripple at the Temple gate. For the same condition of the Lystra lame man the word adunatos is used, which is synonymous. In these cases it is the weakness of disease. In this sense the word is used by Shakespeare (Love's Labor Lost, V, ii, 864; Hamlet, I, ii, 29). The impotent folk referred to in the Epistle of Jeremy (Baruch 6:28) were those weak and feeble from age and want; compare "impotent and snail-paced beggary" (Richard III, IV, iii, 53).

Alexander Macalister