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How To Use Impotent In A Sentence

  • In the bower with his Welsh wife, Mortimer fumes impotently: ‘This is the deadly spite that angers me - / My wife can speak no English, and I no Welsh.’
  • The remake was funny, full of good jokes, strong characters and little blasts of impotent rage. Times, Sunday Times
  • I knew, impotent as I was, that I _could_ play it -- I could feel the sense of power tingling through my own impuissance. The Making Of A Novelist An Experiment In Autobiography
  • A white boy dancer must deliver an impotent, but ironic, rendering of White's (love unlimited) orchestration of potent sexuality.
  • The unconscious mind of man sees correctly even when conscious reason is blind and impotent.
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  • A wise and witty piece by my colleague Barney Ronay in this slot on Saturday suggested that the key role of the modern Premier League manager is to rage impotently in his technical area, funnelling the frustrations and discontent of the supporters away from the owners. Alex McLeish's funnel vision is painful to watch | Martin Kelner
  • Here now is the extreme limit of all moral inquiry, and it is of great importance to determine it even on this account, in order that reason may not on the one hand, to the prejudice of morals, seek about in the world of sense for the supreme motive and an interest comprehensible but empirical; and on the other hand, that it may not impotently flap its wings without being able to move in the (for it) empty space of transcendent concepts which we call the intelligible world, and so lose itself amidst chimeras. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. Third Section: Transition from Metaphysic of Morals to the Critique of Pure Practical Reason.
  • By then, our personalities - soft, giving and flaccid - have already solidified, which renders any effort to stiffen our sinews impotent.
  • Once again he saw himself, as if in a nightmare, watching impotently as the bizarre charabanc of facts and conjecture hurtled on its predestined course. She Closed Her Eyes
  • The British government's policies are locked in the same impotent stasis as the rest of the world's – battening down the hatches, cutting public spending and borrowing, and refusing to accept realities. Observer editorial: Our leaders need to seize control of the crisis
  • Even Goneril has her one splendid hour, her fire - flaught of hellish glory; when she treads under foot the half-hearted goodness, the wordy and windy though sincere abhorrence, which is all that the mild and impotent revolt of Albany can bring to bear against her imperious and dauntless devilhood; when she flaunts before the eyes of her "milk-livered" and "moral fool" the coming banners of France about the "plumed helm" of his slayer. A Study of Shakespeare
  • Opposition captains fear that if he gets going they are likely to be impotent in the face of the onslaught. Times, Sunday Times
  • As Izzy looked on, impotent in disbelief, his body performed a slow cartwheel around the railing. THE TOUCH OF INNOCENTS
  • According to the findings of this study, about 120,000 U.K. men are impotent because of smoking.
  • This tenet of common law states that unless a man can prove that he is sterile, impotent, or away from home at the time of conception, he is the legal father of any child born to his wife during their marriage.
  • I feel impotent to offer any genuine help to sick people. Christianity Today
  • Golf courses once tamed and made to look impotent are sinking their teeth into him. Times, Sunday Times
  • Deprived at one blow of most of his precedents, "shorn" -- as the Breach of Promise Reports puts it -- "of its usual attractions," FIBBINS's speech becomes an impotent affair. Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, October 10, 1891
  • The mass is politically apathetic and impotent, and policy is imposed upon this large proportion of the population.
  • Agamemnon cannot restrain himself and even bursts into verse in the course of this disquisition on the decadence of oratory: artis severae si quis ambit effectus mentemque magnis applicat, prius mores frugalitatis lege poliat exacta. nec curet alto regiam trucem vultu cliensve cenas impotentium captet nec perditis addictus obruat vino mentis calorem, neve plausor in scaenam sedeat redemptus histrionis ad rictus. sed sive armigerae rident Tritonidis arces, seu Lacedaemonio tellus habitata colono Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal
  • He couldn't stand feeling so impotent, so powerless.
  • Despite being the one running around trying to save killers and judges and lawyers from being slaughtered in gruesome fashion, Nick felt like more of a villain -- albeit an impotent one -- than Clyde. Rabid Rewind: Law Abiding Citizen
  • In addition, 5 percent of patients are impotent after the procedure, and 60 percent have retrograde ejaculation.
  • A robin red-breast dropt from the frosty branches of the trees, upon the congealed rivulet; its panting breast and half-closed eyes shewed that it was dying: a hawk appeared in the air; sudden fear seized the little creature; it exerted its last strength, throwing itself on its back, raising its talons in impotent defence against its powerful enemy. II.9
  • It was thought," says Nashe, in his Quaternio, "a kind of solecism, and to savour of effeminacy, for a young gentleman in the flourishing time of his age to creep into a coach, and to shroud himself from wind and weather: our great delight was to out-brave the blustering boreas upon a great horse; to arm and prepare ourselves to go with Mars and Bellona into the field was our sport and pastime; coaches and caroches we left unto them for whom they were first invented, for ladies and gentlemen, and decrepit age and impotent people. Bracebridge Hall
  • They cannot be altogether surprised if people now lump them all together in impotent fury. Times, Sunday Times
  • It makes your teeth itch with impotent rage. Times, Sunday Times
  • A second argument is that monetary policy becomes impotent if it is overused. Times, Sunday Times
  • Just another example of the impotent sackless dem leadership that lets this a$$hat have any chairmanship or caucus with them. Think Progress » Lieberman: ‘It’s Possible’ I Could Be ‘A Good Old-Fashioned New England Moderate Republican’
  • In cases where the husband is impotent but not sterile, the sperm could easily be his, in which case the test tube child would have the same genetic make-up as a naturally conceived child.
  • The protagonist of Hemingway's novel, Jake Barnes, is impotent.
  • I felt that weakness and unmanageableness of knee which comes with strong mental anguish, and I sank back impotent upon the baron, whose lingering legs repudiated the pressure, so that we both accumulated miserably upon Grandstone. Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 85, January, 1875
  • Without the chairman's support, the committee is impotent.
  • They cannot be altogether surprised if people now lump them all together in impotent fury. Times, Sunday Times
  • Korean researchers had 45 impotent men take either 900 mg of Korean red ginseng or a placebo three times daily.
  • This monarch is impotent, his own impending death from lung cancer kept from him. Times, Sunday Times
  • Smugness, conceit, an arrogance which has the appearance of humility… here I can no longer reserve my hatred for these impotent writers.
  • This is what happens when an irresistible force meets an impotent object. Times, Sunday Times
  • He has been seen as an impotent leader who has been nullified by a divided and uncooperative executive board.
  • The remake was funny, full of good jokes, strong characters and little blasts of impotent rage. Times, Sunday Times
  • Of course, there are two sides to every coin and not all bouncers are muscle-bound, impotent meatheads.
  • He admits that he worries for the country and for his party, and has been left feeling impotent stuck on the sidelines. Times, Sunday Times
  • The Indian issue, Jenkins writes, led him into ‘a miasma of impotent isolation.’
  • The woman's face is set in impotent hate, the man's mouth is wried with cursing; and the faces are not young, nor the graven bitterness a mere passing blight. The Joys of Being a Woman and Other Papers
  • Or a man becoming impotent if he's in a relationship that he can't admit he wants to leave. The Sun
  • It suggests that, on the contrary, it is this very world picture that prevents progress and entraps people in a culture of impotent resentment.
  • Building workers with no experience are taken on for low wages, while hardened professionals watch impotently.
  • But it is hardly surprising - when just about every aspect of the curriculum is now prescribed by the government - that teachers feel impotent to use their own know-how and nous.
  • Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is impotent
  • First, a man is ‘conclusively presumed’ to be the father of a child if he is both married to and cohabiting with the mother, as long as he is not sterile or impotent.
  • The poplar trembles before the blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage, gropes around with its feeblest branches, and hisses as in impotent passion. Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Being Selections from the Chief American Writers
  • So I am not surprised that a lot of first-borns are consumed with jealousy, and want to rule the world, and that last-borns have a sort of impotent rage, and want to change it.
  • This is known as impotent rage. Times, Sunday Times
  • These are the "dainties" of which an impotent longing and desire do betray the minds of unstable persons unto a compliance with ways of sin and folly; for I look on these "dainties" to comprise whatever "the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh," or "the pride of life," can afford. The Sermons of John Owen
  • Rumours of his extraordinary sexual powers spread and multiplied, though they were probably nonsense - there seems more evidence, indeed, to suggest that he was sexually impotent.
  • This is what happens when an irresistible force meets an impotent object. Times, Sunday Times
  • To eliminate this, as in double-blind trials, would in many cases render the therapy impotent.
  • Here now is the extreme limit of all moral inquiry, and it is of great importance to determine it even on this account, in order that reason may not on the one band, to the prejudice of morals, seek about in the world of sense for the supreme motive and an interest comprehensible but empirical; and on the other hand, that it may not impotently flap its wings without being able to move in the (for it) empty space of transcendent concepts which we call the intelligible world, and so lose itself amidst chimeras. The Afghan Tragedy
  • The more the mother tried to make her daughter go to school, the more the daughter refused, and the more the mother felt helpless and impotent.
  • Without the chairman's support, the committee is impotent.
  • Yet against internal critics he was often impotent. Times, Sunday Times
  • One night, she makes a pass at him, and though he tries to respond, he is impotent.
  • Morality is often rendered impotent by human selfishness, avarice and wickedness. And few people take morality seriously, or are committed to what is morally right, when personal interests are at stake. Dr T.P.Chia 
  • Emergency services seem impotent in the face of such a disaster.
  • I feel impotent to offer any genuine help to sick people. Christianity Today
  • Herodian troops held all the key points of the city, and what had been the palace of the city's impotent figurehead prince was now called Government House and was occupied by Cado and his captains. The Tower of Fear
  • So now you're in the cinema, shaking with impotent fury. Times, Sunday Times
  • Her weapon is the nasty, snide attack -- on Obama for "paling around with terrorists," on all liberals as un-American, on critics as "limp, impotent members of of the old boys club" who lack "cajones. Mark Green: Her Candidacy Is Over -- Palin's "Brainwashing" and "Joe Welch" Moment
  • Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno, impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong; never to gain or pause, never the soft adventure of undoom, greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence; never to rest and never to have; only to grow. Archive 2008-11-01
  • Some addicts cave in to their most lustful and obsessive desires on a regular basis, while others remain impotent and untemptable no matter what is dangled in front of them.
  • The sincere if impotent desire wins his blessing.
  • The best conclusion it could hope to establish is 'science is utterly impotent to rule on questions of design and God'. Dark Matter Can Enlighten Minds
  • Golf courses once tamed and made to look impotent are sinking their teeth into him. Times, Sunday Times
  • It was thought," says Nashe, in his Quaternio, "a kind of solecism, and to savour of effeminacy, for a young gentleman in the flourishing time of his age to creep into a coach, and to shroud himself from wind and weather: our great delight was to outbrave the blustering Boreas upon a great horse; to arm and prepare ourselves to go with Mars and Bellona into the field, was our sport and pastime; coaches and caroches we left unto them for whom they were first invented, for ladies and gentlemen, and decrepit age and impotent people. Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists
  • Yet against internal critics he was often impotent. Times, Sunday Times
  • They want us to feel impotent, to worship the golden calf of commercialism, dazzled and opiated by its pale buzzing glow.
  • You feel so impotent when your child is ill and you cannot help them.
  • With the official Opposition almost impotent, the country needs strong, Labour-led committees to keep the executive to account.
  • They encounter a little ugly man who is understandably furious at the invasion of his property by these two strangers and vociferates horrific but comically impotent threats.
  • In impotent rage he got up and stalked up and down the flat trying to shake off his blind, frustrated anger. IN REMEMBRANCE OF ROSE
  • Government in these countries has not only been totally discredited; it has become totally impotent. THE ESSENTIAL DRUCKER
  • Only 10%-15% of men are left impotent after brachytherapy, compared with about 50% of men who undergo surgery. Times, Sunday Times
  • For all our technological and intellectual advances, we are impotent when nature rears up against us.
  • They were virtually impotent against the power of the large companies.
  • They were virtually impotent against the power of the large companies.
  • I am an actress, a mimicker, a sham creature - me… how I do loathe my most impotent and unpoetical craft!
  • It also takes no account of the many American men made impotent by surgery for benign tumours they would have died with, not of. Times, Sunday Times
  • Yet it happened, and he felt helpless, powerless, and impotent.
  • Even Goneril has her one splendid hour, her fire - flaught of hellish glory; when she treads under foot the half-hearted goodness, the wordy and windy though sincere abhorrence, which is all that the mild and impotent revolt of Albany can bring to bear against her imperious and dauntless devilhood; when she flaunts before the eyes of her "milk-livered" and "moral fool" the coming banners of France about the "plumed helm" of his slayer. A Study of Shakespeare
  • Sensitive and introvert, suspicious person causes obstacle of hypochondriasis sex spirit more easily and happen impotent.
  • I am an actress, a mimicker, a sham creature - me… how I do loathe my most impotent and unpoetical craft!
  • Greenland hyenas disdainfully sniff me I am not in the desert! the air pauses I hear the grating of poles on their axles the air drones I impotently attend the decivilization of my mind the air brings me the Zambezi Bookslut
  • We all regularly give money to relief agencies and television appeals such as Comic Relief, but the sheer enormity of the statistics and the feeling that aid campaigns only provide short-term aid leave us feeling impotent.
  • The President seems impotent as storms rage around his head. The Sun
  • Theirs is an impotent, childish rage, born of a sense of failure and a resentment of American power.
  • They were virtually impotent against the power of the large companies.
  • He loves Miranda not only for her money but for her wit, and his final exit, amidst curses, echoes that of Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, an unreconciled, impotent figure, with no role in the marriage celebrations.
  • Anna has sullied my faith; she has emasculated me, rendered me --- literally --- impotent. LOVE YOU MADLY
  • Becoming emasculated and impotent isn't a pretty fate for a male frog, but thanks to a pesticide called atrazine, it could be a common one. ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science
  • To eliminate this, as in double-blind trials, would in many cases render the therapy impotent.
  • I refuse to accept any suggestion that we are impotent because of some peculiar accident of history or because of some flaw in our cultural matrix from which we are yet to escape.
  • The hormone treatment is straightforward chemical castration - I am now impotent but it's an advantageous trade-off against a possibly fatal alternative.
  • The play's title refers to Kristallnacht, it's set in 1938, and it solves the mystery of why Sylvia has lost the use of her legs: Thanks to these dazzling performances, you can just about accept Miller's slightly humorless conclusion, conveyed in typical bravura fashion by Mr. Sher, that her illness is caused by the Hitler that lurks inside every impotent, self-hating Jewish husband. The Witty Bits of a Play
  • First, a man is ‘conclusively presumed’ to be the father of a child if he is both married to and cohabiting with the mother, as long as he is not sterile or impotent.
  • They were virtually impotent against the power of the large companies.
  • Even though I have lots of people who hang on my every word and would do anything I told them to, I feel impotent and helpless.
  • The dismay is near universal but appears to be impotent. Times, Sunday Times
  • How, then, do we demythologize and render impotent the demons in our lives?
  • The poplar trembles before the blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage, gropes around with its feeble branches, and hisses as in impotent passion. Earth as Modified by Human Action, The~ Chapter 03 (historical)
  • As you know, statesmanship is a great passion with the South and she is not going to remain contented in the position of impotent isolation to which her repressionist element has consigned her. The Hindered Hand or, The Reign of the Repressionist
  • The figure of exclamation, I call him [_the outcrie_] because it vtters our minde by all such words as do shew any extreme passion, whether it be by way of exclamation or crying out, admiration or wondering, imprecation or cursing, obtestation or taking God and the world to witnes, or any such like as declare an impotent affection, as _Chaucer_ of the _Lady The Arte of English Poesie
  • Similarly, the most complex ritual forms can be rendered impotent and meaningless if a sufficient level of emotional investment isn't there.
  • The woman is not only dominated, but reprobate, not only impotent, but cursed.
  • It makes your teeth itch with impotent rage. Times, Sunday Times
  • Instead of tailoring their protest in a manner that would attract sympathy and understanding they used a method that smacked of defiance, arrogance and impotent sabre-rattling.
  • One way to render it impotent is for the group in question to use the supposedly derogatory term for themselves. Exploring language (6th edn)
  • DMC, the federation is nothing more than an impotent union. Welcome ‘Times’ Readers « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG
  • [1227] In a word, Nihil magis quaerunt quam metum et admirationem hominum; [1228] and as another hath it, Dici non potest, quam impotenti ardore in homines dominium, et Divinos cultus maligni spiritus affectent. Anatomy of Melancholy
  • US trying to 'defang' Pak army to make it impotent against India: Ex-Pak minister Gaea Times (by Simple Thoughts) Breaking News and incisive views 24/7
  • As regards all these three elements, De Quincey's childhood was prosperous; afterwards, vicissitudes came, -- mighty changes capable of affecting all other transmutations, but thoroughly impotent to annul the inwrought grace of a pre-established beauty. The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863
  • She blazed with impotent rage.
  • The President seems impotent as storms rage around his head. The Sun
  • Wilf gave up his efforts to secure the towline, leaned against the starboard bollard and grinned with enjoyment as he sat there watching his grandfather, who was used to doing things his own way, fume impotently.
  • The government fears that the union bureaucracy cannot indefinitely contain the mounting anger of public-sector workers with bombast and impotent protests.
  • There emerges an impotent impasse in which the actually organic aspect takes over.
  • It reportedly works for up to 70 percent of impotent men, a home run for the drug's manufacturer and a boon for the sex lives of couples across the nation.
  • Belief is an ephemeral and passive condition, based on submission to the prestidigitator through the suspension of reason, often in the face of obvious evidence of an opposite intention, rather like the empty, impotent vessel of its relative, hope. The Crystal Ball(s)
  • Laureate, have found in the Peninsular struggle with Napoleon, the very perfection of popular grandeur; others, agreeing with ourselves, have seen in this pretended struggle nothing but the last extravagance of thrasonic and impotent national arrogance. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
  • They sit in impotent opposition while the country goes to the dogs.
  • They cannot be altogether surprised if people now lump them all together in impotent fury. Times, Sunday Times
  • Government in these countries has not only been totally discredited; it has become totally impotent. THE ESSENTIAL DRUCKER
  • He admits that he worries for the country and for his party, and has been left feeling impotent stuck on the sidelines. Times, Sunday Times
  • Finally, his closing remarks were deadly: An overly flowery imprecation to courage that, ironically, made him sound utterly impotent: Obama's Speech: Not The Turning Point He Had In Mind
  • Heritage-rich nations and tribal groups alike sound bellicose in defence of heritage whose attrition they are impotent to prevent.
  • He even hung by one hand, tantalizingly just beyond reach, and mocked them as they gnashed their tusks with impotent rage. CHAPTER III
  • He turned the bureau's news camera on the night sky to record the tracer fire now arcing impotently towards the incoming missiles.
  • Beer mats and posters persuading impotent men to seek medical help are to be placed in dozens of Scottish pubs.
  • Central government has become the more impotent the bigger it has grown. MANAGING IN TURBULENT TIMES
  • Similarly, when neoconservative ideologues speak of needing to rebuild an embattled US hegemony and legitimacy, they aren't impotently expatiating.
  • Thanks to Bush (with help from the impotent and crooked Zeropeans) the UN is more irrelevant today than it has ever been and more and more countries are damning the French, Germans and Russians for their part in appeasing and enabling the terrorists they find on their own soil. Think Progress » Iraq: The War To Start All Wars
  • Morality is often rendered impotent by human selfishness, avarice and wickedness. And few people take morality seriously, or are committed to what is morally right, when personal interests are at stake. Dr T.P.Chia 
  • Treatment of impotence leads to a major improvement in the quality of life for both the impotent male and his partner (s).
  • Unfortunately, the argument is made with such perseverated, autistic-like frequency that even politicians on the Democratic side feel pressured to echo the same sentiments, though sugar-coated catchphrases fully acessorized with vague, impotent reassurances. Jeanine Molloff: The Character Issue, FISA and The Constitution
  • He was fat, he was used to having his own way, and he was loud in his impotent fury about the weather. Times, Sunday Times
  • If the world's most respected institution of international governance is rendered impotent by accusations as distorted and exaggerated as these, we should all fear the consequences.
  • He's not impotent, he just isn't very interested and says there is more to a relationship than sex.
  • I felt an impotent anger, but also a curiosity, rise in my chest.
  • Opposition captains fear that if he gets going they are likely to be impotent in the face of the onslaught. Times, Sunday Times
  • Watching her thrown into this heartbreaking cycle of events made us feel so small, so impotent, so powerless.
  • They found that, far from being the impotent rubber-stamp portrayed by earlier historians, the parliament of the 15th and 16th centuries was one of the most powerful bodies of its type in the world.
  • Perhaps one of the most interesting and difficult elements of impotence cases is trying to answer how the trial and its publicity affected the public reputation of the allegedly impotent man.
  • They acted as if they were impotent bystanders rather than elected officials charged by those who put them in office with maintaining civil order and ensuring the public's safety.
  • Further research will here have to be made, with the idea of “impotent need,” inasmuch as, from a high ethical, national-dietetical point of view, the question is asked whether, to what extent, and how, “impotent need” may be made a potent one. System der volkswirthschaft. English
  • But his are cries of impotent despair against the master who has enslaved him.
  • This is known as impotent rage. Times, Sunday Times
  • But several biographers have argued that Barrie was asexual, possibly impotent, and certainly never acted on any improper urges.
  • Beyond shaking one's fist at the sky in impotent rage, not much can be done for that stuff.
  • Men who fail to have an erection on demand believe they are impotent and incapable of having sex.
  • Thus, tired of being the poor and comparatively impotent relation, General Synod is now chafing at the bit.
  • For he that is angry seems with a kind of grief and close contraction of himself, to turn away from reason; but he that sins through lust, being overcome by pleasure, doth in his very sin bewray a more impotent, and unmanlike disposition. Meditations
  • They sit in impotent opposition while the country goes to the dogs.
  • A second argument is that monetary policy becomes impotent if it is overused. Times, Sunday Times
  • The bull was in the greatest fury, and rose to the surface, snorting and blowing in his impotent rage; but as the ambatch float was exceedingly large, and this naturally accompanied his movements, he tried to escape from his imaginary persecutor, and dived constantly, only to find his pertinacious attendant close to him upon regaining the surface. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 3
  • Tom Hollander doubles with impressively rapid costume changes, as the impotent bourgeois businessman, Chandebise, and as Poche, the hapless drunken flunky of the brothel punningly named the Coq d'Or. Comic Christmas Crackers
  • The theory, or Greenspan's understanding of it, nevertheless still holds sway as Congress has proved impotent to re-regulate the gambling casino that is Wall Street.
  • A female caged with an impotent male produced clutches at roughly one month intervals.
  • Then Lerumie took to the main rigging, leaving Jerry impotently to rage on the deck beneath him. CHAPTER VI
  • [6407] Curtius insinuates, nulla res efficacius multitudinem regit quam superstitio; melius vatibus quam ducibus parent, vana religione capti, etiam impotentes faeminae; the common people will sooner obey priests than captains, and nothing so forcible as superstition, or better than blind zeal to rule a multitude; have so terrified and gulled them, that it is incredible to relate. Anatomy of Melancholy
  • Instead of tailoring their protest in a manner that would attract sympathy and understanding they used a method that smacked of defiance, arrogance and impotent sabre-rattling.
  • It also takes no account of the many American men made impotent by surgery for benign tumours they would have died with, not of. Times, Sunday Times
  • The alternative is to become impotent very fast. MANAGING IN TURBULENT TIMES
  • Franklin dug through the spoils, focusing his trained eye and pulling out the impotent mushrooms.
  • Just look at how impotent the Government has been over the steel debacle. The Sun
  • Just look at how impotent the Government has been over the steel debacle. The Sun
  • He is impotent and unable to satisfy his estranged wife.
  • It often reminded me of modern _bassi-rilievi_ and portrait statues, in which gentlemen looking sideways with very modern faces, and both hands full of swords, pens, or books, stand impotently swaddled up in ancient togas or the folds of similar enormous cloaks. The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859
  • Most prominent amongst these are terms that mock the miller as an impotent and inadequate cuckold.
  • Michael has other problems as well: his job involves experiments with animals, he's hung up on his father, he's impotent.
  • [6249] Levinus Lemnius reckons up three things which generally disturb the peace of marriage: the first is when they marry intempestive or unseasonably, as many mortal men marry precipitately and inconsiderately, when they are effete and old: the second when they marry unequally for fortunes and birth: the third, when a sick impotent person weds one that is sound, novae nuptae spes frustratur: many dislikes instantly follow. Anatomy of Melancholy
  • Unless he acts, allies insist, he will be painted as an impotent puppet, thwarted by London Labour, and vulnerable to the opposition leader's bombast.
  • And yet I have known some who have secured themselves for this misfortune by coming half-sated elsewhere, purposely to abate the ardour of their fury, and others who being grown old, find themselves less impotent by being less able; and particularly one who found an advantage by being assured by a friend of his that had a countercharm against certain enchantments that would defend him from this disgrace. Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction
  • Thus, they are impotent, powerless to confront the current regime.
  • Only months earlier he had been a sequacious adherent of it as an incorrigible womanizer, and yet now his actions were more impotent than a misfiring and his manhood was debunked by being sodomized. An Apostate: Nawin of Thais
  • Agamemnon cannot restrain himself and even bursts into verse in the course of this disquisition on the decadence of oratory: artis severae si quis ambit effectus mentemque magnis applicat, prius mores frugalitatis lege poliat exacta. nec curet alto regiam trucem vultu cliensve cenas impotentium captet nec perditis addictus obruat vino mentis calorem, neve plausor in scaenam sedeat redemptus histrionis ad rictus. sed sive armigerae rident Tritonidis arces, seu Lacedaemonio tellus habitata colono Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal
  • Let them bombinate impotently forever, for all I care. Archive 2008-07-01
  • They have become impotent - a fact which naturally causes a great deal of anxiety to them and to their wives.
  • Government in these countries has not only been totally discredited; it has become totally impotent. THE ESSENTIAL DRUCKER
  • The hand bunched into a fist and struck the bedframe with an impotent rage that made the whole bed tremble. Sick Cycle Carousel
  • This monarch is impotent, his own impending death from lung cancer kept from him. Times, Sunday Times
  • In 1433, John's wife Alice Russell took him to court claiming he was impotent and demanding the marriage be dissolved.
  • To eliminate this, as in double-blind trials, would in many cases render the therapy impotent.
  • The dismay is near universal but appears to be impotent. Times, Sunday Times
  • It makes me hot with impotent, sweary incandescence. Times, Sunday Times
  • Or a man becoming impotent if he's in a relationship that he can't admit he wants to leave. The Sun
  • Has the man been impotent? The Times Literary Supplement
  • One policeman knelt by the impotent aggressor and talked to him quietly.
  • The rest of you can just scream impotently behind the wheel; I get to write impotently and show the younger people what the word "quixotic" means. SFGate: Top News Stories
  • Coraline, given a magic vagina by the lesbians, is able to see through the illusions of the world and can easily defeat the impotent Other Father who is revealed as a hungry pumpkin, another yonic symbol. Nick Mamatas' Journal
  • The end result is that we not only feel frightened - we often feel unable to respond, and feel powerless and impotent as individuals.
  • Just as the French New Wave broke with what it called the cinéma de papa, Five Easy Pieces is about the extended struggle of lead character Robert Eroica Dupea (Jack Nicholson) to flee the values of his upper-middle-class family: a mute father who has been felled by a stroke; an overweight, neurotic sister; a brother who sports a neck brace and seems to be impotent. Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph

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