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potentate

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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WOTD – 3 April 2010, 3 April 2011

Etymology

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From Middle English potentat, from Old French, from Late Latin potentātus (“rule, political power”), from Latin potēns (“powerful, strong”), the active present participle of possum (“to be able”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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potentate (plural potentates)

  1. A powerful leader; a monarch; a ruler.
    • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
      But Kings and mightieſt Potentates muſt die,
      For that's the end of humane miſerie.
    • 1900, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie:
      She was now one of a group of oriental beauties who, in the second act of the comic opera, were paraded by the vizier before the new potentate as the treasures of his harem.
    • 2011, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East, page 269:
      Life for ordinary barons in Outremer Jerusalem was probably better than for kings in Europe, where even potentates wore unlaundered wool and lived in bare-stone draughty keeps with rough furniture.
    • 2017 May 21, Graeme Wood, “Trump Complies Perfectly With the Saudi Line”, in The Atlantic‎[1]:
      Anyone expecting such a speech has forgotten that Trump’s first impulse is to please. He is constitutionally incapable of displeasing a live audience, let alone a foreign potentate who has recently lassoed him with a golden chain.
    • 2019 April 18, David Shariatmadari, “Ize on the prize: is Prince Charles the last guardian of British spelling?”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN:
      Bad news for a certain kind of pedantic patriot (look away now, Jacob Rees-Mogg). Prince Charles has debased the English language – and in a letter to a foreign potentate, no less.
    • 2025 August 16, Honor Cargill-Martin, “Caligula in the Hamptons”, in The New York Times‎[3], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
      The place in question was the stretch of Campanian coastline around the Bay of Naples. Originally a quiet retreat of rugged cliffs and healing thermal springs, by the middle of the first century B.C., the bay was teeming with military potentates, spendthrift aristocrats and the people who could afford to keep up with them.
      (Can we archive this URL?)
  2. A powerful polity or institution.
  3. (derogatory) A self-important person.
  4. (humorous) Someone acting in an important role.

Usage notes

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This term usually carries connotations or implications of ancient despotism before advanced Western conceptions of civil law and Enlightenment values; in other words, a potentate can be described as a king or realm that exercises "raw", absolute power by decree and entrenched in "exotic" customs and traditions (cf. Orientalism). For example, a "Hindu potentate" would refer to those petty kings who controlled various small dominions in India before the British Raj. Particularly in the second sense, use of "potentate" to refer to Western states even before the modern era is rare, and may even be intended humorously in such a case.

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Translations

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Adjective

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potentate (comparative more potentate, superlative most potentate)

  1. (obsolete) Regnant, powerful, dominant.
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