Potence

The vampiric discipline of supernatural strength, from White Wolf Game Studios' Vampire: The Masquerade role-playing game. Vampires with this discipline are able to punch through walls, lift cars, pick up normal humans one-handed by the collar, and perform similar physical feats (strength increasing with higher levels of Potence, of course). In the Mind's Eye Theatre version of the rules, high-level Potence creates other strange effects, which of course are copyrighted material and won't be discussed here. Go read the Mind's Eye Theatre Guide to the Camarilla.

Potence has absolutely nothing to do with soy.

(Scottish) A rotating ladder providing access to the nesting boxes inside beehive-type doocots.

In French, a gibbet and various other cantilevered beam constructions such as the handlebar stem on a bicycle; the suggestion that this has something to do with the vague similarity in structure (or at least in sticking-outness) to an erect (and hence presumably potent) penis is etymologically unfounded and undoubtedly deeply Freudian.

Po"tence (?), n. [F., fr. LL. potentia staff, crutch, L., might, power. See Potency.]

Potency; capacity.

[R.]

Sir W. Hamilton.

 

© Webster 1913.