Emily Dickinson Lexicon

IM'PO-TENCE, or IM'PO-TEN-CY, n. [L. impotentia; in and potentia, from potens, from the root of L. possum, posse, which consists of the elements Pd or Pt. See Power.]

1. Want of strength or power, animal or intellectual; weakness; feebleness; inability; imbecility; defect of power, natural or adventitious, to perform any thing. Some were poor by the impotency of nature; as young fatherless children, old decrepit persons, idiots and cripples. Hayward. The impotence of exercising animal motion attends fevers. Arbuthnot.
2. Moral inability; the want of power or inclination to resist or overcome habits and natural propensities.
3. Inability to beget.
4. Ungovernable passion; a Latin signification. [Little used.] Milton.