# Actual Freedom – Definitions

# Definitions ## Action Potential; Calorific; Electromotive Force ## Energy; Power; Puissance Action Potential: MARTIN: Also, is there any relation in your opinion between these forms of pure intent and what you call “the quickening”?[1]. Thanks. [1][Richard]: “...it is of a quality of such fineness that a fine-champagne-bubbles type of word my second wife (de jure) made up all those years ago – ‘tintling’ – seems to be most apt”. [endquote]. RICHARD: Indeed so ... thus far that calorific energy/ electrochemical potency, which feeling-being ‘Grace’ dubbed “the quickening” when ‘she’ arrived back from New Zealand in late 2009 and similarly initiated its activation, to full effect whilst intensively interacting, has been a feature peculiar to me, in its active operation, although there is no reason why a similar activation would not occur with regards Vineeto were a similarly motivated fellow human being to interact in a like manner. In fact it would be odd if it did not (I am no fan of ‘freak of nature’ hypotheses). Although the data-pool is way too small (a handful of cases), to reliably draw information from, there are enough indications already to suggest that the suitably motivated feeling-being – having become so vitally interested in and oriented solely towards the sensate world/ the actual world as to be naïveté itself (essentially, being out-from-control/ in a different-way-of-being, with all of that embodied ‘being’ on board) and thus having a 100% exclusive focus on that one thing (i.e., their destiny) and that one thing alone – will thereby be psychosomatically exciting the ‘action potentials’, of virtually every excitable cell constituting the physical body unwittingly embodying that ‘being’, which excited cells generate an electrical field such as to innervate its activation in the corresponding excitable cells of this flesh-and-blood body, by that or as that very intensity of interacting. I have declined to speculate any more than this quite spare skeleton of an hypothesis – my knowledge of electromotive force, for instance, is too meagre to proceed further anyway – but after nigh-on 23 years of being sans identity in toto/ sans the entire affective faculty (which includes, of course, its epiphenomenal psychic facility) I can categorically rule out any operant affective vibe and/or psychic current whatsoever. ‘Tis all quite magical in its effect, though. Regards, Richard. Action Potential Study: The study of action potentials has required the development of new experimental methods. The initial work, prior to 1955, was carried out primarily by Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxley, who were, along John Carew Eccles, awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their contribution to the description of the ionic basis of nerve conduction. It focused on three goals: isolating signals from single neurons or axons, developing fast, sensitive electronics, and shrinking electrodes enough that the voltage inside a single cell could be recorded. The first problem was solved by studying the giant axons found in the neurons of the longfin inshore squid (Loligo forbesii and Doryteuthis pealeii, at the time classified as Loligo pealeii). These axons are so large in diameter (roughly one millimetre, or a hundred-fold larger than a typical neuron) that they can be seen with the naked eye, making them easy to extract and manipulate. However, they are not representative of all excitable cells, and numerous other systems with action potentials have been studied. The second problem was addressed with the crucial development of the voltage clamp, which permitted experimenters to study the ionic currents underlying an action potential in isolation, and eliminated a key source of electronic noise, the current associated with the capacitance of the membrane. Other electronic advances included the use of Faraday cages and electronics with high input impedance, so that the measurement itself did not affect the voltage being measured. The third problem, that of obtaining electrodes small enough to record voltages within a single axon without perturbing it, was solved in 1949 with the invention of the glass micropipette electrode, which was quickly adopted by other researchers. Refinements of this method are able to produce electrode tips that are as fine as a hundred angstrom, or ten nano-metres {an angstrom=one ten-millionth of a millimetre}, which also confers high input impedance. Action potentials may also be recorded with small metal electrodes placed just next to a neuron, with neurochips containing electrolyte-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, or optically with dyes which are sensitive to the calcium status of an isolated cell, tissue or medium, or to voltage. While glass micropipette electrodes measure the sum of the currents passing through many ion channels, studying the electrical properties of a single ion channel became possible in the 1970s with the development of the patch clamp by Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann. For this discovery, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1991. Patch-clamping verified that ionic channels have discrete states of conductance, such as open, closed and inactivated. Optical imaging technologies have been developed in recent years to measure action potentials, either via simultaneous multisite recordings or with ultra-spatial resolution. Using voltage-sensitive dyes, action potentials have been optically recorded from a tiny patch of cardiomyocyte membrane. ~ (2012 Wikipedia Encyclopaedia). Calorific: • calorific (adj.): capable of producing heat; causing heat; heating; calorifacient. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). • calorifacient (adj.): producing heat; usually used of foods; "calorifacient chili peppers"; (related words): hot (used of physical heat; having a high or higher than desirable temperature or giving off heat or feeling or causing a sensation of heat or burning; "hot stove"; "hot water"; "a hot August day"; "a hot stuffy room"; "she's hot and tired"; "a hot forehead") ~ Princeton's WordNet 3.0 • calorific (adj.): possessing the quality of producing heat; heating; calorific rays: the invisible, heating rays which emanate from the sun, and from burning and heated bodies. ~ (Webster’s 1913 Dictionary). • calorific (adj.): 1. relating to calories. 2. (physics): relating to or producing heat or other energy; (antonym): frigorific. 3. (US, of food): high in calories and thus likely fattening; (usage notes): for the senses "relating to calories" and "relating to or producing heat", caloric is the usual form in the US, and calorific is the usual form in the UK; (synonyms): caloric (US, Canada); (derived terms): calorimetry; calorific value; calorific ray; isocalorific. [etymology: from French calorifique or Latin calorificus, from calor + -i- + -ficus]. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • calorific ray (n.; pl. calorific rays): (physics, obsolete): infrared ray, heat ray. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • calorific value (n.; pl. calorific values): 1. the amount of energy produced by the complete combustion of a material or fuel; measured in units of energy per amount of material, e.g. kJ/kg; [e.g.]: “The engine was fired with Welsh (Bedwas) coal having a calorific value of 13,800 B.T.U. per lb. as received, and 13,970 B.T.U. per lb. in the dry condition”. ~ (page 168, “Testing a rebuilt "Merchant Navy" Pacific of the S.R.”, in Trains Illustrated, March, 1960); 2. the amount of energy available from an item of food when digested, mostly from carbohydrates and fats. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • calorimetry ( (n.; pl. calorimetries): 1. (physics): the science of measuring the heat absorbed or evolved during the course of a chemical reaction or change of state; 2. a wide headband that covers the ears, for wearing on cold days; (derived terms): adsorption calorimetry; differential scanning calorimetry; (related terms): calorimeter; calorimetric. [etymology: from Latin calor (“warmth, heat”) + -metry]. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • isocalorific (adj.): relating to, or producing the same amount of heat; 2. synonym of isocaloric. [etymology: from iso- +‎ calorific]. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • isocaloric (adj.): 1. having the same calorific value; 2. (of a diet): having approximately the same calorific value each day; see also eucaloric (viz.: of a diet in which the number of calories consumed, as food, is approximately the same as the number expended). [etymology: from iso- +‎ caloric]. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • eucaloric (adj.): (of a diet) in which the number of calories consumed (as food) is approximately the same as the number expended. [etymology: from eu- +‎ caloric]. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • calorific (adj.): relating to or generating heat or calories. [French calorifique, from Latin calōrificus : calor, heat; see kelə- in Indo-European roots + -ficus, -fic.] ~ American Heritage® Dictionary • calorific (adj.): of, concerning, or generating heat; (adv.): calorifically. ~ Collins English Dictionary • calorific (adj.): pertaining to conversion into heat. [1675-85; from Late Latin calōrificus, causing warmth, warming]. ~ Webster's College Dictionary • calorific (adj.): heat-generating; "the calorific properties of fuels"; (related words): hot (used of physical heat; having a high or higher than desirable temperature or giving off heat or feeling or causing a sensation of heat or burning; "hot stove"; "hot water"; "a hot August day"; "a hot stuffy room"; "she's hot and tired"; "a hot forehead"). ~ Princeton's WordNet 3.0 • calorific (adj.): producing heat. [L. calor, heat] ~ Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary • calorific (adj.): producing heat. [L. calor, heat] ~ Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing • calorific (adj.): anything producing or able to produce heat, or pertaining to heat production. ~ Collins Dictionary of Medicine • calorie (n.): abbr. cal, unit of heat energy in the metric system. The measurement of heat is called calorimetry. The calorie, or gram calorie, is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of pure water 1℃. The kilocalorie, or kilogram calorie, is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 kg of pure water 1℃; it is equal to 1,000 cal. The kilocalorie is used in dietetics for stating the heat content of a food, i.e., the amount of heat energy that the food can yield as it passes through the body; in this context, the kilocalorie is usually called simply the calorie. The amount of heat energy needed to effect a 1℃ temperature increase in 1 gram of water varies with temperature (see heat capacity); thus the temperature range over which the heating takes place must be stated to define the calorie precisely. The 15° calorie, or normal calorie, is widely used in chemistry and physics; it is measured by heating a 1-gram water sample from 14.5℃ to 15.5℃ at 1 atmosphere pressure. The 4° calorie, also called the small calorie or therm, is measured from 3.5℃ to 4.5℃ (water is most dense at 3.98℃); the large calorie, or Calorie, is equivalent to 1,000 small calories. The average value of the calorie in the range 0℃ to 100℃ is called the mean calorie; it is 1-100 of the energy needed to heat 1 gram of water from its melting point to its boiling point. The calorie may also be defined by expressing its value in some other energy units. The 15° calorie is equivalent to 4.185 joules (J), 1.162×10−6 kilowatt-hours, 3.968×10−3 British thermal units, and 3.087 foot-pounds; the 4° calorie equals 4.204 J; and the mean calorie equals 4.190 J. Two other calories sometimes used are the International Steam Table calorie, equal to 4.187 J, and the thermochemical calorie, equal to 4.184 J. When the calorie is used for precision measurement of heat energy, the particular calorie being used must be specified. ~ The Columbia Electronic Encyclopaedia • calorie (n.): a unit of heat that is not part of a system of units. Designation, cal. In addition to the calorie, the kilocalorie (also known as the large calorie) is widely used; 1 kcal = 1,000 cal. Originally, the calorie was defined as the quantity of heat necessary to raise the temperature of 1 g of water by 1°C. Neither the temperature interval within which the heating was performed nor its conditions had been defined prior to the late 19th century. Various calories have therefore been used: the 0°, 15°, 20°, and 25° calories as well as the average calorie and the thermochemical calorie. The 20° kilocalorie was used in the USSR from 1934 to 1957. This kilocalorie was equal to the quantity of heat (with an accuracy of up to 0.02 percent) required to heat 1 kg of water from 19.5° to 20.5°C. The First International Steam Table Conference (London, 1929) introduced the international calorie, defined as 1/861.1 of the international kilowatt-hour (kW-hr). The International Steam Table Conferences in 1954 and 1956 accepted the decisionon transition from the calorie to a new unit, the absolute joule(J), which subsequently was included in the International Sys-tem of Units. The following relationship was established betweenthe calorie and the joule: 1 cal = 4.1868 J (exactly). The 20°calorie is equal to 4.181 J. The calorie used widely in thermo-chemistry is equal to 4.1840 J. ~ The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition; 1970-1979) • calorie (n.): (thermodynamics) Abbreviated cal; often designated c. A unit of heat energy, equal to 4.1868 joules. Also known as International Table calorie (IT calorie). A unit of energy, equal to the heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water from 14.5° to 15.5°C at a constant pressure of 1 standard atmosphere; equal to 4.1855 ± 0.0005 joules. Also known as fifteen-degrees calorie; gram-calorie (g-cal); small calorie. A unit of heat energy equal to 4.184 joules; used in thermochemistry. Also known as thermochemical calorie. ~ McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms • calorie (n.): the heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1°C; now called a small calorie. A large calorie is equal to 1000 small calories, i.e. a kilocalorie. ~ McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. • calorie (n.): calory; a unit of heat, equal to 4.1868 joules (International Table calorie): formerly defined as the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C under standard conditions. It has now largely been replaced by the joule for scientific purposes. ~ Collins Discovery Encyclopedia • Calorie (n.): 1. a unit of heat, equal to one thousand calories, often used to express the heat output of an organism or the energy value of food 2. the amount of a specific food capable of producing one thousand calories of energy. ~ Collins Discovery Encyclopedia • calorie (n.): 1. Abbr. cal Any of several approximately equal units of heat, each measured as the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C at 1 atmosphere pressure. Also called gram calorie, small calorie. 2. Abbr. cal The unit of heat equal to 1/100 the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water from 0 to 100°C at 1 atmosphere pressure. Also called mean calorie. 3. a. Abbr. Cal The unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1°C at 1 atmosphere pressure. Also called kilocalorie, kilogram calorie, large calorie. b. A unit of energy-producing potential equal to this amount of heat that is contained in food and released upon oxidation by the body. Also called nutritionist's calorie. [French, from Latin calor, heat; see caloric.] ~ American Heritage® Dictionary • calorie (n.): or calory n, pl -ries (Units) a unit of heat, equal to 4.1868 joules (International Table calorie): formerly defined as the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C under standard conditions. It has now largely been replaced by the joule for scientific purposes. Abbreviation: cal Also called: gram calorie or small calorie Compare Calorie [C19: from French, from Latin calor heat] • Calorie (n.): 1. (Units) Also called: kilogram calorie, kilocalorie or large calorie a unit of heat, equal to one thousand calories, often used to express the heat output of an organism or the energy value of food. Abbreviation: Cal 2. (Units) the amount of a specific food capable of producing one thousand calories of energy. ~ Collins English Dictionary • calorie (n.): or cal•o•ry (ˈkæl ə ri) n., pl. -ries. 1. a. Also called gram calorie, small calorie. an amount of heat exactly equal to 4.1840 joules.Abbr.: cal b. (usu. cap.) kilocalorie. Abbr.: Cal 2. a. a unit equal to the kilocalorie, expressing the heat output of an organism and the energy value of food. b. a quantity of food capable of producing such an amount of energy. [1800–10; from French from Latin: calor heat] ~ Webster's College Dictionary • calorie (n.): 1. A unit of heat equal to the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. Also called small calorie. 2. a. A unit of heat equal to the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1,000 grams of water by one degree Celsius. Also called kilocalorie, large calorie. b. This unit used as a measure of the amount of heat energy released by food as it is digested by the body. ~ The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary • calorie (n.): 1. A calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of a gram of water by 1°C. A Calorie (kilocalorie) is 1000 calories. 2. (cal) A measure of heat energy representing the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature 1 g of water by 1°C. Also called “small calorie”: 1000 cal = 1 kcal or Cal. See joule, kilocalorie. 3. A calorie (c) is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1°C. A Calorie (C) is a kilocalorie, or 1000 calories (c). The energy content of foods is usually given in Calories (kilocalories). ~ Dictionary of Unfamiliar Words by Diagram Group • calorie (n.): Calorie - a unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree at one atmosphere pressure; used by nutritionists to characterize the energy-producing potential in food kilocalorie, kilogram calorie, large calorie, nutritionist's calorie energy unit, heat unit, work unit - a unit of measurement for work gram calorie, small calorie, calorie - unit of heat defined as the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree centigrade at atmospheric pressure 2. calorie - unit of heat defined as the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree centigrade at atmospheric pressure gram calorie, small calorie energy unit, heat unit, work unit - a unit of measurement for work Calorie, kilocalorie, kilogram calorie, large calorie, nutritionist's calorie - a unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree at one atmosphere pressure; used by nutritionists to characterize the energy-producing potential in food. ~ Princeton WordNet 3.0 • calorie (n.): (Physics) The unit of heat according to the French standard; the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram (sometimes, one gram) of water one degree centigrade, or from 0° to 1°. Compare the English standard unit, Foot pound. ~ (Webster’s 1913 Dictionary). __________ • “This definite amount of heat per pound liberated by perfect combustion is termed the calorific value of that substance”. (“Steam, Its Generation and Use”, Babcock & Wilcox Co). • “In any fuel containing hydrogen the *calorific* value as found by the calorimeter is higher than that obtainable under most working conditions in boiler practice by an amount equal to the latent heat of the volatilization of water. This heat would reappear when the vapor was condensed, though in ordinary practice the vapor passes away uncondensed. This fact gives rise to a distinction in heat values into the so-called ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ *calorific* values. The higher value, i. e., the one determined by the calorimeter, is the only scientific unit, is the value which should be used in boiler testing work, and is the one recommended by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers”. (page 174, “Steam, Its Generation and Use”, Babcock & Wilcox Co., Thirty-fifth Edition, 4th Issue; Copyright, 1919, by The Babcock & Wilcox Co., New York). • “He said that the company's imported coal requirement up to 2015 is around 25 tons of varying calorific from 4,800 kcal/kilogram to 6,400 kcal/kg. Essar Eyeing Two Coal-Bed Methane Blocks in Indonesia I Made Sentana of Dow Jones Newswires 2011). • “The company said its reserves in Colombia have high calorific value, low sulfur and low ash. (Itochu Buys Stake in Colombian Coal Operation Kenneth Maxwell 2011). Electromotive Force: • electromotive (adj.): of, relating to, or producing electric current. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary). • electromotive (adj.): of, concerned with, producing, or tending to produce an electric current. ~ (Collins English Dictionary). • electromotive (adj.): pertaining to, producing, or tending to produce a flow of electricity. [1800-10]. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary). • electromotive (adj.): relating to or producing electric current. ~ (The American Heritage Student Science Dictionary). • electromotive (adj.): concerned with or producing electric current. ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 3.0). • electromotive (adj.; pron. ē-lĕk″trō-mō′tĭv): pertaining to the passage of electricity in a current or motion produced by it. [New Latin ēlectro-, prefix, from Latin ēlectrum, ‘amber’ + Latin mōtus, past participle of movēre, ‘to move’; ‘mover’, ‘motor’]. ~ (Farlex and Partners Medical Dictionary). • electromotive (adj.): of, concerned with, producing, or tending to produce an electric current. ~ (Collins Discovery Encyclopedia). Random Literary Samples. • “But whenever there is a separation of charge, an electric potential is set up. This measures the force tending to drive the separated charge together and wipe out the polarisation.The electric potential is therefore also termed *the electromotive force* (the force tending to ‘move the electric charge’), which is usually abbreviated emf for convenience”. [emphasis added]. ~ (page 121, “The Human Brain, its Capacities and Functions”, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992); publisher, New American Library, New York; 1963). • “Many animals possess the five senses, but only man possesses constructive, creative power, and is able to build on the information gained through the senses. It is the constructive, creative power which raises man above the level of the beast and enables him to devise and fashion wonderful inventions. Among the most important of his inventions are those which relate to electricity; inventions such as trolley car, elevator, automobile, electric light, the telephone, the telegraph. (...). The power which causes the current is called *the electromotive force*, and the value of this force, generally written ᴇ.ᴍ.ғ., of a cell depends upon the materials used. When the cell consists of copper, zinc, and dilute sulphuric acid, *the electromotive force* has a definite value which is always the same no matter what the size or shape of the cell. But the ᴇ.ᴍ.ғ. has a decidedly different value in a cell composed of iron, copper, and chromic acid. Each combination of material has its own specific electromotive force”. [emphases added]. ~ (pp. 306 & 308, Chapter Thirty: ‘Electricity’, in the college textbook “General Science”, by Prof. Bertha M. Clark, PhD; 1912, American Book Company, New York). • “An ‘electric field’ is the expression of *the electromotive force*, which is present where ionised free electrons and ions are, such as in space plasma”. [emphasis added]. ~ (online comment by Anaconda⁽*⁾, October 27, 2009, on the post “Could a Black Hole Fit in Your Computer or In Your Pocket?” by Nancy Atkinson; October 20, 2009, Universe-Today). ⁽*⁾[Anaconda]: DrFlimmer wrote: “Have you changed your tactics and avoid any form of ‘scientific’ debate, just playing the surprised victim...?” No, I’m willing to debate, but I see no reason to respond to personal abuse... besides... personal abuse isn’t designed to further a discussion, anyhow. Personal abuse is designed to stiffle discussion, polarise, and make the thread as unpleasant as possible for the average reader—so they will skip it. • [DrFlimmer]: “Just because there are currents in space is no ‘proof’ of EU claims {EU=Electric Universe a.k.a. Electric Cosmos}. And just to claim that any current in space must be a proof of EU, is just nonsense”. • [Anaconda]: Yes, that’s true, it’s not proof, but it is the starting foundation of a chain of scientific evidence. In science there is no “proof” there is only evidence. • [DrFlimmer]: “...the role it [electric currents] plays is on details—not large scales”. • [Anaconda]: Hmm? What about the helio current sheet? It is the biggest structure in the solar system. • [DrFlimmer]: “You have no large scale electic fields...”. • [Anaconda]: Careful there DrFlimmer, an ‘electric field’ is present wherever charged particle are present. An ‘electric field’ is the expression of *the electromotive force*, which is present where ionised free electrons and ions are, such as in space plasma. The helio current sheet is a large electric field as well as an electric current. Remember, charged particles in ordered motion is an electric current. • [DrFlimmer]: “...that [no presence of electric fields] is also shown by in-situ experiments in near-earth space”. • [Anaconda]: False. There are electric fields present in the Van Allen belts. Why? There are free electrons and ions in the belts and wherever there are free electrons and ions there is *electromotive force*, (the force which attacts electrons and ions together), also, known in aggragate as an electric field. • [DrFlimmer]: “The sun is not on any electric potential, on average the sun is not charged (also called “overall neutral”)—otherwise we would see an electric field, which we don’t! That is contrary to a basic EU claim” {EU=Electric Universe a.k.a. Electric Cosmos}. • [Anaconda]: Think again. NASA states: • “Magnetic fields are produced by electric currents. These currents are generated within the Sun by the flow of the Sun’s hot, ionised gases. We observe a variety of flows on the Sun’s surface and within its interior. Nearly all of these flows may contribute in one way or another to the production of the Sun’s magnetic field”. NASA does not agree with you, DrFlimmer. • [DrFlimmer]: “...otherwise we would see an electric field [in the Sun]...”. • [Anaconda]: As NASA states very specifically there are electric currents in the Sun and with electric currents come electric fields—DrFlimmer, you need to brush up on what constitutes an electric field. (...). As Irvin Langmuir, 1932 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, noted, along with coining the term plasma, “Plasma is self-organising”. That’s why he named it plasma—because it acted like living tissue, specifically blood plasma. This self-organisng tendency is because of *the electromotive force* present between free electrons and ions in space plasma, any plasma. If there is plasma, there is an electric field—it’s that simple and that’s black and white. Let’s see, DrFlimmer, you wanted debate and everything you said was wrong. [emphases added]. ~ (online dialogue by Anaconda, October 27, 2009, on the post “Could a Black Hole Fit in Your Computer or In Your Pocket?” by Nancy Atkinson; October 20, 2009, Universe-Today). (left-clicking the yellow rectangles with the capital ‘U’ opens each in a new web page). Energy: • energy (n.): the capacity for doing work. ~ (Dictionary of Unfamiliar Words). • energy (n.): 1. the capacity or power to do work, such as the capacity to move an object (of a given mass) in a given direction by the application of force; energy can exist in a variety of forms, such as electrical, mechanical, chemical, thermal, or nuclear, and can be transformed from one form to another; it is measured by the amount of work done, usually in joules or watts (see more at law of conservation of energy); compare power, work; 2. usable heat or power; [e.g.]: “The school consumed too much energy last year”. ~ (The American Heritage Student Science Dictionary). • energy (n.): 1. power, force, strength, might, activity, intensity, stamina, exertion, forcefulness; [e.g.]: “He was saving his energy for the big race in Belgium”; 2. liveliness, life, drive, fire, spirit, determination, pep, vitality, animation, vigour, verve, zest, resilience, élan, brio, vivacity; (informal): get-up-and-go, go, zip; (slang): welly (viz.: energy, concentration, or commitment; esp. in the phrase “give it some welly”), vim; [e.g.]: “At sixty-five years of age, her energy and looks are wonderful”; 3. power; [e.g.]: “Oil shortages have brought an energy crisis”. ~ (Collins English Thesaurus). • energy (n.): capacity or power for work or vigorous activity; (synonyms): power, puissance, force, might, potency, steam, strength, sprightliness, animation; (informal): get-up-and-go, go, pep, peppiness, zip. ~ (The American Heritage Roget’s Thesaurus). • energy (n.): 1. internal or inherent power; capacity of acting, operating, or producing an effect, whether exerted or not; as, ‘men possessing energies may suffer them to lie inactive’; [e.g.]: “The great energies of nature are known to us only by their effects”. (William Paley; 1743-1805); 2. power efficiently and forcibly exerted; vigorous or effectual operation; as, ‘the energy of a magistrate’; 3. strength of expression; force of utterance; power to impress the mind and arouse the feelings; life; spirit; said of speech, language, words, style; as, ‘a style full of energy’; 4. (physics): capacity for performing work; accumulation, etc.: see under accumulation, conservation, correlation, etc. ~ (Webster’s 1913 Dictionary). • energy (n.; pl. energies): 1. the capacity for work or vigorous activity; [e.g.]: “Who has the energy to climb that trail?”; (synonyms): strength, power, might¹, force, energy; these nouns denote the capacity to act or work effectively; strength refers especially to physical, mental, or moral robustness or vigour; [e.g.]: “Enough work to do, and strength enough to do the work”. (Rudyard Kipling); power is the ability to do something and especially to produce an effect; [e.g.]: “I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an Act of Congress void”. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jnr.); might often implies abundant or extraordinary power; [e.g.]: “He could defend the island against the whole might of the German Air Force”. (Winston S. Churchill); force is the application of power or strength; [e.g.]: “The overthrow of our institutions by force and violence”. (Charles Evans Hughes); energy refers especially to a latent source of power; [e.g.]: “The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful to society, had that society been well organised”. (Mary Wollstonecraft); 2. (a.; also energies): exertion of vigour or power; [e.g.]: “A project requiring a great deal of energy and time”; “She devoted her energies to writing songs”; (b.) vitality and intensity of expression; [e.g.]: “A speech delivered with energy and emotion”; (c.) (informal): a non-physical force or quality perceived as inhering in a particular place, person, or situation; [e.g.]: “He was turned off by the group’s negative energy and attitude”; 3. (a.) usable heat or power; [e.g.]: “Each year Americans consume a high percentage of the world’s energy per head”; (b.) a source of usable power, such as petroleum or coal; 4. physics (a.) the capacity of a physical system to do work; (b.) a form, amount, or level of this capacity; [e.g.]: “A searing beam of thirty trillion protons ⁽⁰¹⁾, with energies up to fifty million electronvolts⁽⁰²⁾”. (Science News). [French énergie, from Late Latin energīa, from Greek energeia, from energos, ‘active’, from en-, ‘in’, ‘at’ + ergon, ‘work’]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary). ⁽⁰¹⁾proton (n.): a stable subatomic particle {a.k.a. a subatomic corpuscle, i.e., one of a veritable menagerie of inescapably necessary mathematical postulates, as revealed by the Emeritus Professor of Physics, Sir Alfred B. Pippard, in 1994⁽*⁾, and otherwise known outside of theoretical physics as a sub-microscopic thingumajig called an atom (from Latin atomus, ‘indivisible’, from Greek átomos, literally, ‘that cannot be divided’) by atomists, in accordance with the ancient theory of Leucippus, in the Fifth Century BCE, and elaborated by Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, for whom simple, minute, undividable and indestructible motes—hypothetical specks of matter—were the basic components, the fundamental constituents, of the entire universe} which has a positive electric charge and is part of the {postulated} nucleus of an atom. Its charge is opposite to that of a {postulated} electron but is equal in magnitude. A {postulated} proton’s mass is 1,836 times that of a {postulated} electron; see more at atom (viz.: the smallest unit of an element, {postulated as} consisting of protons and neutrons in a dense central nucleus orbited by a number of electrons. In the {postulated to be} electrically neutral atoms, the {postulated} number of protons equals the {likewise postulated} number of electrons. These {postulated} atoms remain intact in chemical reactions except for the removal, transfer, or exchange of certain electrons; see the “did you know” note at subatomic particle (viz.: one of the {postulated} basic units of which atoms and all matter are {postulated as being} made; protons, neutrons and electrons are {postulated} subatomic particles; (Did You Know?): until the twentieth century, scientists thought {i.e., those mathematicians postulated} that atoms were the smallest units of matter. This view {i.e., postulation} started to change following some experiments in the late 1800s involving electrical discharges. By the early 1900s it was clear that these discharges were composed of a new kind of {postulated} particle, one that was {postulated to be} much lighter than an atom of the lightest chemical element, hydrogen. These {postulated} particles were named electrons. It was further learned {i.e., further postulated} that atoms themselves contained {what was postulated as} electrons; the electron thus became the first known {i.e., the first postulated} subatomic particle. Since electrons {are postulated to} have negative electrical charge, but the atoms containing them are {postulated as being} neutral in charge, researchers believed {!sic!; more like betrusted} that atoms must also contain positively-charged particles which balanced the negatively-charged electrons. This idea {!sic! this speculation}, together with research into radioactivity, led Ernest Rutherford to the discovery {!sic! to the further postulation} of the atomic nucleus in 1911. Rutherford saw {i.e., he postulated} the nucleus as the home of these positively-charged particles (now called protons). Further experiments on radioactivity showed, by 1932, that the {postulated} nucleus also contained a third kind of particle, the {postulated} neutron. While electrons, protons, and neutrons are the most familiar {of a veritable menagerie of postulated} subatomic particles, they are not the only ones: dozens more have since been identified {i.e., dozens more have since been postulated}. Scientists now think {i.e. they further postulate} that many subatomic particles are themselves made up of smaller {postulated} units called elementary particles, such as {the postulated} neutrinos and {the hypothetical} quarks). [light-blue curly-bracketed inserts added]. ~ (The American Heritage Student Science Dictionary). ⁽*⁾[Prof. Sir Alfred B. Pippard]: “Whether electrons and nuclei have *an objective existence* in reality is *a metaphysical question* to which no definite answer can be given. There is, however, no doubt that *to postulate* their existence is, in the present state of physics, *an inescapable necessity* if a consistent theory is to be constructed to describe economically and exactly the enormous variety of observations on the behaviour of matter. The habitual use of the language of particles by physicists *induces and reflects the conviction* that, even if the particles elude direct observation, *they are as real as any everyday object*. Following the initial triumphs of quantum mechanics, Prof. Paul Dirac in 1928 extended *the theory* so that it would be compatible with *the special theory* of relativity...”. [emphases added]. ~ (written in 1994 by Prof. Sir Alfred Brian Pippard, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge. ©Encyclopaedia Britannica DVD). ⁽⁰²⁾electronvolt (n.; symbol: eV): a {postulated} unit of energy equal to the work done on a {postulated} electron accelerated through a {postulated} potential difference of one volt; one electronvolt is {postulated as being} equivalent to 1.602 × 10⁻¹⁹ joule. ~ (Collins English Dictionary). • energy (n.; pl. energies): 1. intensity or vitality of action or expression; forcefulness; 2. capacity or tendency for intense activity; vigour; 3. vigorous or intense action; exertion; 4. physics (a.) the capacity of a body or system to do work; (b.) (symbol: E): a measure of this capacity, expressed as the work it does in changing to some specified reference state; it is measured in joules (SI units); 5. a source of power; see also kinetic energy, potential energy. [C16: from Late Latin energīa, from Greek energeia, ‘activity’, from energos, ‘effective’, from en- + ergon, ‘work’]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary). • energy (n.; pl. energies): 1. the capacity for vigorous activity; available power; 2. a feeling of having an adequate or abundant amount of such power; 3. (often energies): an exertion of such power; effort; [e.g.]: “She threw her energies into the job”; 4. the habit of vigorous activity; vigour; 5. the ability to act, lead others, or effect things forcefully; 6. forcefulness of expression; 7. (physics; symbol: E): the capacity to do work; 8. a source of usable power, as fossil fuel or electricity. [1575-85; from Late Latin energīa, from Greek enérgeia, ‘activity’, from energe- (singular of energeîn, ‘to be in action’, ‘operate’, from en- + -ergeîn, derivative of érgos, ‘work’]. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary). • energy (n): 1. a thermodynamic quantity equivalent to the capacity of a physical system to do work; the units of energy are joules or ergs; [e.g.]: “In fact energy can take a wide variety of forms”; (synonyms): free energy; (related words): natural philosophy, physics (the science of matter and energy and their interactions; [e.g.]: “His favourite subject were physics and maths”); physical phenomenon (a natural phenomenon involving the physical properties of matter and energy); activation energy, energy of activation (the energy which an atomic system must acquire before a process, such as an emission or reaction, can occur; [e.g.]: “Catalysts are said to reduce the energy of activation during the transition phase of a reaction”); alternative energy (energy derived from sources which do not use up natural resources or harm the environment); atomic energy, nuclear energy (the energy released by a nuclear reaction); binding energy, separation energy (in theoretical physics the energy required to separate particles from a molecule or atom or nucleus; equals the mass defect); chemical energy (that part of the energy in a substance which can be released by a chemical reaction); electrical energy, electricity (energy made available by the flow of electric charge through a conductor; [e.g.]: “They built a car that runs on electricity just recently”); energy level, energy state (a definite stable energy a physical system can have; used especially of the state of electrons in atoms or molecules in theoretical physics; [e.g.]: “According to quantum theory only certain energy levels are possible”); rest energy (in theoretical physics the energy equivalent to the mass of a particle at rest in an inertial frame of reference; equal to the rest mass times the square of the speed of light); work (in physics, a manifestation of energy; the transfer of energy from one physical system to another expressed as the product of a force and the distance through which it moves a body in the direction of that force; [e.g.]: “In physics work equals force times distance”); heat, heat energy (a form of energy which is transferred by a difference in temperature); mechanical energy (energy in a mechanical form); radiant energy (energy which is transmitted in the form of electromagnetic radiation; energy which exists in the absence of matter); radiation (energy which is radiated or transmitted in the form of rays, esp. the rays of sunlight); 2. forceful exertion; [e.g.]: “He plays tennis with great energy you know”; (synonyms): vigour, zip; [e.g.]: “He’s full of zip today”; (related words): forcefulness, strength, force (physical energy or intensity; [e.g.]: “He hit with all the force he could muster”; “It was destroyed by the strength of the gale”; “A government has not the vitality and forcefulness of a living man”); athleticism, strenuosity (intense energy; [e.g.]: “His music is characterised by a happy athleticism all throughout”); 3. enterprising or ambitious drive; [e.g.]: “Europeans often laugh at American energy engendered”; (synonyms): get-up-and-go, push; (related words): drive (the trait of being highly motivated; [e.g.]: “His drive and energy exhausted his co-workers”); second wind (renewed energy or strength to continue an undertaking; [e.g.]: “She had dinner and got a second wind to finish painting”; “The employers, initially taken by surprise at the pace of developments, regained their second wind quickly enough”); 4. an imaginative lively style (especially style of writing); [e.g.]: “His writing conveys great energy and reach”; (synonyms): vim, muscularity, vigour; [e.g.]: “A remarkable muscularity of style”; (related words): sprightliness, liveliness, spirit, life (animation and energy in action or expression; [e.g.]: “It was a heavy play and the actors tried in vain to give life to it”); verve, vitality (an energetic style); 5. a healthy capacity for vigorous activity; [e.g.]: “Jogging works off my excess energy every time”; (synonyms): vim, vitality; [e.g.]: “He seemed full of vim and vigour today”; (related words): good health, healthiness (the state of being vigorous and free from bodily or mental disease); juice (energetic vitality; [e.g.]: “Her creative juices were flowing”); chi, ki, qi (the circulating life energy in Chinese philosophy which is thought to be inherent in all things; [e.g.]: “In traditional Chinese medicine the balance of negative and positive life energy in the body is believed to be essential for good health”); 6. any source of usable power; [e.g.]: “The Department of Energy is responsible for maintaining the energy policy”; (related words): physical phenomenon (a natural phenomenon involving the physical properties of matter and energy); 7. (capitalised): the federal department responsible for maintaining a national energy policy of the United States; created in 1977; (synonyms): Department of Energy, ᴅᴏᴇ, Energy Department; (related words): executive department (a federal department in the executive branch of the government of the United States); Department of Energy Intelligence, ᴅᴏᴇɪ (an agency which collects political and economic and technical information about energy matters and makes the Department of Energy’s technical and analytical expertise available to other members of the Intelligence Community). ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 3.0). • a waste of energy (idiom): a useless, vain, or redundant effort or action; [e.g.]: “It turns out the boss had already chosen a direction for the project, so my presentation was a complete waste of energy all along”; “Don’t bother trying to change my mind about this, it’s a waste of energy you know!”; “Mum is never going to let you stay out till midnight—your attempts to sway her are just a waste of energy on your part”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • brown energy (idiom): energy which is derived from traditional resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, which are seen by some as environmentally unfriendly; [e.g.]: “If we’re going to keep our planet clean, we need to move away from brown energy and invest in renewable resources, such as wind and solar”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • bundle of energy (idiom): someone who is exceptionally energetic, alert, productive, or hyperactive; [e.g.]: “My kids are always such bundles of energy first thing in the morning”; “Susan sure is a bundle of energy today! She’s been tearing through her list of things to do”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • throw energy away on someone or something (idiom): to waste, squander, or misuse energy because of or for the benefit of someone or something; [e.g.]: “Don’t throw your time and energy away on people who don’t appreciate your efforts”; “I can’t believe I threw all the energy of my youth away on such an unfulfilling job”; “No wonder you don’t have any savings—you keep throwing your energy away on useless projects!”. [note: a noun or pronoun is used either before or after “away”]. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • unavailable energy (idiom): in science, energy converted into a form which is unavailable for work; [e.g.]: “Today, we’ll be studying the unavailable energy in this system”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • [Wikipedia]: in physics, energy (from Ancient Greek ἐνέργεια, enérgeia, ‘activity’) is the quantitative property which must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on, or to heat, the object (note: the second law of thermodynamics imposes limitations on the capacity of a system to transfer energy by performing work since some of the system’s energy might necessarily be consumed in the form of heat instead). Energy is a conserved quantity; the law of conservation of energy states that energy can be converted in form, but not created or destroyed. The SI unit (a unit as defined by the International System of Units) of energy is the joule, which is defined as the energy transferred to an object by the work of moving it a distance of one metre against a force of one newton (a newton is the force which gives a mass of one kilogram an acceleration of one metre per second squared; i.e. an increase in velocity by one metre per second every second). Common forms of energy include the kinetic energy of a moving object, the potential energy stored by an object’s position in a force field (gravitational, electric or magnetic), the elastic energy stored by stretching solid objects, the chemical energy associated with chemical reactions (e.g., the energy released when a fuel burns), the radiant energy carried by light {postulated as being electromagnetic radiation}, and the internal energy contained within a thermodynamic system (i.e., the thermal energy due to an object’s temperature). All living organisms constantly take in and release energy. Both mass and energy are closely related. Due to the mass-energy equivalence, any object which has mass when stationary (called rest mass) also has an equivalent amount of energy whose form is called rest energy, and any additional energy (of any form) acquired by the object above that rest energy will increase the object’s total mass just as it increases its total energy. All living organisms require energy to stay alive, such as the energy derived from food. Human civilisation requires energy to function, which it gets from energy resources such as fossil fuels, nuclear fuel, or renewable energy. The processes of Earth’s climate and ecosystem are driven by the radiant energy Earth receives from the Sun and the geothermal energy contained within the earth. The total energy of a system can be subdivided and classified into potential energy, kinetic energy, or combinations of the two in various ways. Kinetic energy is determined by the movement of an object—or the composite motion of the object’s components—while potential energy reflects the potential of an object to have motion, generally being based upon the object’s position within a field or what is stored within the field itself. While these two categories are sufficient to describe all forms of energy, it is often convenient to refer to particular combinations of potential and kinetic energy as its own form. Some forms of energy which an object or system can have as a measurable property is as follows: • Mechanical—the sum of macroscopic translational and rotational kinetic and potential energies; • Electric—potential energy due to or stored in electric fields; • Magnetic—potential energy due to or stored in magnetic fields; • Gravitational—potential energy due to or stored in gravitational fields; • Chemical—potential energy due to chemical bonds; • Elastic—potential energy due to the deformation of a material (or its container) exhibiting a restorative force; • Mechanical wave—kinetic and potential energy in an elastic material due to a propagated deformational wave; • Sound wave—kinetic and potential energy in a fluid due to a sound propagated wave (a particular form of mechanical wave); • Radiant—potential energy stored in the fields of propagated by electromagnetic radiation, {postulated as} including light; • Rest—potential energy due to an object’s rest mass; • Thermal—{postulated as being the} kinetic energy of the microscopic motion of particles, a form of disordered equivalent of mechanical energy; • Ionisation—potential energy due to the formation of or separation into ions by heat, electrical discharge, radiation, or chemical reaction; • Nuclear—potential energy due to its absorption (endothermic reactions) or release (exothermic reactions) in nuclear reactions or radioactive decay; • Chromo-dynamic—{postulated as being the} potential energy which binds {the hypothetical} quarks⁽⁰¹⁾ to form {the hypothetical} hadrons {!sic!: hadrons are hypothesised as being composite subatomic particles, i.e., corpuscles, made of two or more hypotheticals known as quarks postulated as being together by a hypothetical strong interaction, they are hypothetically analogous to postulates known as molecules, which are postulated as being held together by a hypothetical electric force; NB.: six flavours of quarks are postulated. viz.: 1. up quarks, 2. down quarks, 3. charm quarks, 4. strange quarks, 5. top quarks, and 6. bottom quarks, with the last-named, the bottomer quark, drolly known in the halcyon pre-ᴘᴄ era as a penetratee and/or catamite and/or bardash⁽⁰²⁾ quark}; {Image Caption: In a typical lightning strike, five hundred mega-joules of electric potential energy is converted into the same amount of energy in other forms, mostly light energy, sound energy and thermal energy}. {Image Caption: Thermal energy is {the postulated} energy of microscopic constituents of matter, which may include both kinetic and potential energy}. The word energy derives from the Ancient Greek ἐνέργεια, romanised as energeia, literally ‘activity’, ‘operation’, which possibly appears for the first time in the work of Aristotle in the fourth century BCE. In contrast to the modern definition, energeia was a qualitative philosophical concept, broad enough to include ideas such as happiness and pleasure. In the late seventeenth century, Gottfried Leibniz proposed the idea of the Latin vis viva, or ‘living force’, which he defined as the product of the mass of an object and its velocity squared; he believed that total vis viva was conserved. To account for slowing due to friction, he theorised that thermal energy consisted of the random motion of the constituent parts of matter, although it would be more than a century until this was generally accepted. The modern analogue of this property, kinetic energy, differs from vis viva only by a factor of two. In 1807, Thomas Young was possibly the first to use the term “energy” instead of vis viva, in its modern sense. Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis described “kinetic energy” in 1829 in its modern sense, and in 1853, William Rankine coined the term “potential energy”. The law of “conservation of energy” was also first postulated in the early nineteenth century, and applies to any isolated system. It was argued for some years whether heat was a physical substance, dubbed the caloric, or merely a physical quantity, such as momentum. In 1845 James Prescott Joule discovered the link between mechanical work and the generation of heat. These developments led to the theory of “conservation of energy”, formalised largely by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) as the field of thermodynamics. The study of thermodynamics aided the rapid development of explanations of chemical processes by Rudolf Clausius, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Walther Nernst. It also led to a mathematical formulation of the concept of entropy by Rudolf Clausius and to the introduction of laws of radiant energy by Jožef Stefan. According to Amalie ‘Emmy’ Noether’s theorem, the “conservation of energy” is a consequence of the fact that the laws of physics do not change over time. Thus, since 1918, theorists have understood that the law of “conservation of energy” is the direct mathematical consequence of the translational symmetry of the quantity conjugate to energy, namely time. In 1843, James Prescott Joule independently discovered the mechanical equivalent in a series of experiments. The most famous of them used the “Joule Apparatus”, a descending weight, attached to a string, caused rotation of a paddle immersed in water, practically insulated from heat transfer. It showed how the gravitational potential energy lost by the weight in descending was equal to the internal energy gained by the water through friction with the paddle. In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of energy is the joule, named after James Joule. It is a derived unit. It is equal to the energy expended (or work done) in applying a force of one newton through a distance of one metre. However energy is also expressed in many other units not part of the SI, such as “ergs”, “calories”, “BTUs” (‘British Thermal Units’), “kilowatt-hours” and “kilocalories”, which require a conversion factor when expressed in SI units. The SI unit of energy rate (energy per unit time) is the watt, which is a joule per second. Thus, one joule is one watt-second, and thirty-six hundred joules equal one watt-hour. The CGS energy unit is the erg and the imperial and US customary unit is the foot-pound. Other energy units such as the “electronvolt, food “calorie” or thermodynamic “kcal” (kilo-calories based on the temperature change of water in a heating process), and “BTU” are used in specific areas of science and commerce. (...elided...). In geology, continental drift, mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes are phenomena which can be explained in terms of energy transformations in the Earth’s interior, while meteorological phenomena like wind, rain, hail, snow, lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes are all a result of energy transformations brought about by solar energy on the atmosphere of the planet Earth. Sunlight may be stored as gravitational potential energy after it strikes the Earth, as (for example) water evaporates from oceans and is deposited upon mountains (where, after being released at a hydroelectric dam, it can be used to drive turbines or generators to produce electricity). Sunlight also drives many weather phenomena, save those generated by volcanic events. An example of a solar-mediated weather event is a hurricane, which occurs when large unstable areas of warm ocean, heated over months, give up some of their thermal energy suddenly to power a few days of violent air movement. In a slower process, radioactive decay in the core of the Earth releases heat. This thermal energy drives plate tectonics and may lift mountains, via orogenesis. This slow lifting represents a kind of gravitational potential energy storage of the thermal energy, which may be later released to active kinetic energy in landslides, after a triggering event. Earthquakes also release stored elastic potential energy in rocks, a store that has been produced ultimately from the same radioactive heat sources. Thus, according to present understanding, familiar events such as landslides and earthquakes release energy which has been stored as potential energy in the Earth’s gravitational field or elastic strain (mechanical potential energy) in rocks. Prior to this, they represent release of energy which has been stored in matter since the collapse of long-destroyed supernova stars created this material. In cosmology and astronomy the phenomena of stars, nova, supernova, quasars and gamma-ray bursts are the universe’s highest-output energy transformations of matter. All stellar phenomena (including solar activity) are driven by various kinds of energy transformations. [light-blue curly-bracketed inserts added]. ~ (2024 Wikipedia Encyclopaedia). ⁽⁰¹⁾quarks (n.): 1. any of a class of six fundamental fermions⁽⁰³⁾, two in each of the three generations, one having an electric charge of −⅓, the other, +⅔, comprising the down, up, strange, charm, bottom, and top quarks; quarks are the basic components of all hadrons; 2. any of the six quarks’ associated antiparticles, the antiquarks; 3. a soft, creamy, usually unsalted cheese traditional to central Europe and made from cow’s milk coagulated by the lactic acid produced by bacteria rather than by the use of rennet. [from “Three quarks for Muster Mark!”, a line in ‘Finnegans Wake’ by James Joyce; ultimately from Middle High German quarc, from Lower Sorbian twarog, from Old Church Slavonic tvarogŭ; (word history): “Three quarks for Muster Mark! | Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark | And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark”; this passage, part of a scurrilous thirteen-line poem directed against King Mark, the cuckolded husband in the Tristan & Iseult legend, has left its mark on modern theoretical physics. The poem and the accompanying prose are packed with names of birds and words suggestive of birds, and the poem is a squawk against the king that suggests the cawing of a crow. The word quark comes from the standard English verb “quark”, meaning ‘to caw, croak’, and also from the dialectal verb “quawk”, meaning ‘to caw’, ‘to screech like a bird’. It is easy to see why James Joyce chose the word, but why should it have become the name for a group of hypothetical subatomic particles proposed as the fundamental units of matter? U.S. physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019), who proposed this name for these particles in 1963, said in a private letter of June 27, 1978, to the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary that he had been influenced by James Joyce’s words: “The allusion to three quarks seemed perfect” (originally there were only three subatomic quarks). Prof. Gell-Mann, however, wanted to pronounce the word with an awe-sound, not an are-sound, as James Joyce seemed to indicate by rhyming words in the vicinity such as Mark. He got around this “by supposing that one ingredient of the line ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark’ was a cry of ‘Three quarts for Mister...’ heard in H. C. Earwicker’s pub”, a plausible suggestion given the complex punning in James Joyce’s novel. It seems appropriate that this perplexing and humorous novel should have supplied the term for particles which come in six “flavours” and three “colours”]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary). ⁽⁰²⁾catamite & bardash (n.): a boy kept for unnatural purposes. [catamite from French from Latin catamitus, catameitus, corrupt form of Greek γανυμήδης (ganymídis), ‘Ganymede’; bardash from French bardache, from Spanish bardaxa = Italian bardascia, from Arabic bardaj, ‘slave’, ‘captive’]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). ⁽⁰³⁾fermion (n.): any of a class of particles having a spin that is half an odd integer and obeying the exclusion principle, by which no more than one identical particle may occupy the same quantum state. The fermions include the baryons, quarks, and leptons. [named after Enrico Fermi; 1901-1954]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary). ⁽⁰³⁾fermion (n.): any of a group of elementary particles, such as a nucleon, that has half-integral spin and obeys Fermi-Dirac statistics; compare boson (viz.: any of a group of elementary particles, such as a photon or pion, that has zero or integral spin and obeys the rules of Bose-Einstein statistics; named after Satyendra Nath Bose, 1894-1974, Indian physicist). [C20: named after Enrico Fermi⁽⁰⁴⁾, 1901-1954, an Italian nuclear physicist instrumental in the development of the principles of quantum physics; he created the first self-sustaining chain reaction in uranium at Chicago in 1942 and worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos; he later contributed to the development of the hydrogen bomb and served on the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary). ⁽⁰⁴⁾Enrico Fermi, who made a substantial contribution to the development of contemporary theoretical and experimental physics, was instrumental in the development of the principles of quantum physics. From 1934 to 1938, together with his colleagues, he studied the properties of neutrons and laid the foundations of neutron physics. He was the first to observe induced radioactivity, which is caused by neutron bombardment of a number of elements, including uranium. He developed the theory of neutron moderation, for which he received a Nobel prize in 1938. In December 1942 he became the first to achieve a nuclear chain reaction, in the world’s first nuclear reactor, which he constructed using graphite as the neutron moderator and uranium as fuel. ~ (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition; 1970-1979). • energy (symbol E): the exertion of power; the capacity to do work, taking the forms of kinetic energy, potential energy, chemical energy, electrical energy, etc.; (synonyms): dynamic force. [from Greek energeia, from en, ‘in’ + ergon, ‘work’]. ~ (Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary). • energy (symbol E): the capacity to do work, measured in joules; types: potential/ stored energy, kinetic/ in motion energy; see activation energy, adaptation energy, binding energy, biomass energy, bond dissociation energy, orgone energy (viz.: a substance postulated by Wilhelm Reich, who thought it was present everywhere and needed to be incorporated in people for sexual activity and mental health). ~ (Miller-Keane Encyclopaedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health). • energy (n.): the capacity of a body or system to do work. The most important energy forms, as far as living organisms are concerned, are heat, radiant, chemical and mechanical energy. Energy units of importance are: consumption = production + respiration + waste material. The quantity of solar energy entering the earth’s atmosphere is 64.3×10⁸ J m⁻² yr⁻¹ (where J = joule). The amount of solar energy available to plants in Britain is 10.5×108 J m⁻² yr⁻¹. The SI unit of energy is the joule (J). In plants and animals, energy is stored in adenosine triphosphate (short-term storage), and starch and fat (long-term storage). ~ (Collins Dictionary of Biology). (left-clicking the yellow rectangle with the capital ‘U’ opens a new web page). Power: • power (n.): 1. capacity or power for work or vigorous activity; (synonyms): energy, force, might, potency, puissance, strength, sprightliness, steam, animation; (informal): get-up-and-go, go, pep, peppiness, zip; 2. the state or quality of being physically strong; (synonyms): potence, potency, powerfulness, puissance, sinew, strength, brawn, might, muscle, thew (=a sinew or muscle, esp. if strong or well-developed; muscular power or strength; often used in plural); 3. the right and power to command, decide, rule, or judge; (synonyms): might, domination, authority, command, control, dominion, jurisdiction, mastery, prerogative, sovereignty, sway; (informal): say-so; 4. effective means of influencing, compelling, or punishing; (synonyms): force, weight; (informal): clout, muscle; 5. the capacity to exert an influence; (synonyms): force, forcefulness, magnetism; 6. (regional): a great deal; (synonyms): abundance, mass, mountain, much, plenty, profusion, wealth, world; (informal): barrel, heap, lot, pack, peck, pile; (regional): sight. ~ (The American Heritage Roget’s Thesaurus). • power (n.): 1. (a.) the ability or capacity to act or do something effectively; [e.g.]: “Is it in your power to undo this injustice?”; (b.) (often powers): a specific capacity, faculty, or aptitude; [e.g.]: “She used her powers of concentration”; 2. (a.) physical strength or force exerted or capable of being exerted; [e.g.]: “The power of the waves”; (synonyms): strength, might¹, force, energy, power; these nouns denote the capacity to act or work effectively; strength refers especially to physical, mental, or moral robustness or vigour; [e.g.]: “Enough work to do, and strength enough to do the work”. (Rudyard Kipling); might often implies abundant or extraordinary power; [e.g.]: “He could defend the island against the whole might of the German Air Force”. (Winston S. Churchill); force is the application of power or strength; [e.g.]: “The overthrow of our institutions by force and violence”. (Charles Evans Hughes); energy refers especially to a latent source of power; [e.g.]: “The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful to society, had that society been well organised”. (Mary Wollstonecraft); power is the ability to do something and especially to produce an effect; [e.g.]: “I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an Act of Congress void”. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jnr.); 2. (a.) (also energies): exertion of vigour or power; [e.g.]: “A project requiring a great deal of energy and time”; “She devoted her energies to writing songs”; (b.) effectiveness at moving one’s emotions or changing how one thinks; [e.g.]: “A novel of great power and precision”; 3. (a.) the ability or official capacity to exercise control; authority; [e.g.]: “How long has that party been in power do you know?”; (b.) the military strength or economic or political influence of a nation or other group; [e.g.]: “That country projects its power throughout the region”; (c.) a country, nation, or other political unit having great influence or control over others; [e.g.]: “The western powers prevailed”; 4. (a.) a supernatural being; [e.g.]: “The powers of evil”; (b.) (powers, Christianity): the sixth of the nine orders of angels in medieval angelology; 5. (a.) the energy or motive force by which a physical system or machine is operated; [e.g.]: “Turbines turned by steam power provided electricity”; “A sailing ship driven by wind power alone”; (b.) the capacity of a system or machine to operate; [e.g.]: “A vehicle that runs under its own power all day”; (c.) electrical or mechanical energy, especially as used to assist or replace human energy; (d.) electricity supplied to a home, building, or community; [e.g.]: “A storm which cut off power to the whole region”; 6. (physics): the rate at which work is done, expressed as the amount of work per unit time and commonly measured in units such as the watt and horsepower; 7. electricity (a.) the product of applied potential difference and current in a direct-current circuit; (b.) the product of the effective values of the voltage and current with the cosine of the phase angle between current and voltage in an alternating-current circuit; 8. (mathematics): (a.) see exponent (viz.: a number or symbol, as 3 in (x + y)³, placed to the right of and above another number, symbol, or expression, denoting the power to which that number, symbol, or expression is to be raised; also called “power”); (b.) the number of elements in a finite set; 9. (statistics): in a statistical test, the probability of correctly rejecting the null hypothesis when it is false; 10. a measure of the magnification of an optical instrument, such as a microscope or telescope; 11. (chiefly Upper Southern United States): a large number or amount; see note at powerful (viz.: in the Upper Southern United States the words “powerful” and “mighty” are intensives used frequently in the same way as the word very; [e.g.]: “Your boy’s grown powerful big”; “The new baby is mighty purty”; powerful is used as an adjective in some expressions; [e.g.]: “The storm did a powerful lot of harm”; in the same dialect region the noun power has, in addition to its standard meaning, the sense of ‘a large number’ or ‘a large amount’; this sense appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as common in dialectal British English of the 1700s and 1800s; [e.g.]: “It has done a power of work”. (Charles Dickens); all these derivative senses of “power” and “might” take advantage of the notion of strength inherent in these nouns, making them natural intensives); 12. (archaic): an armed force; (adj.): 1. of or relating to political, social, or economic control; [e.g.]: “A power struggle”; “A power base”; 2. operated with mechanical or electrical energy in place of bodily exertion; [e.g.]: “A power tool”; “The car had power windows”; 3. of or relating to the generation or transmission of electricity; [e.g.]: “The power company”; “The power lines”; 4. (informal) of or relating to influential business or professional practices; [e.g.]: “A pinstriped suit with a power tie”; “Met with high-level executives at a power breakfast”; (tr.v.; powered, powering, powers): to supply with power, especially mechanical or electrical power; (idiom): “powers that be”: those who hold effective power in a system or situation; [e.g.]: “A plan vetoed by the powers that be forthwith”. [Middle English, from Old French pooir, ‘to be able’, ‘power’, from Vulgar Latin *potēre, ‘to be able’, from Latin potis, ‘able’, ‘powerful’]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary). __________ • power (n.): 1. ability or capacity to do something; 2. (often plural) a specific ability, capacity, or faculty; 3. political, financial, social, etc, force or influence; 4. control or dominion or a position of control, dominion, or authority; 5. a state or other political entity with political, industrial, or military strength; 6. a person who exercises control, influence, or authority; [e.g.]: “He’s a power in the state”; 7. a prerogative, privilege, or liberty; 8. (a.) legal authority to act, esp in a specified capacity, for another; (b.) the document conferring such authority; 9. (a.) a military force; (b.) military potential; 10. (a.) the value of a number or quantity raised to some exponent; (b.) another name for exponent⁴; 11. (statistics): the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis in a test when it is false; the power of a test of a given null depends on the particular alternative hypothesis against which it is tested; 12. (physics; engineering; symbol: P): a measure of the rate of doing work expressed as the work done per unit time; it is measured in watts, horsepower, etc.; 13. (a.) the rate at which electrical energy is fed into or taken from a device or system; it is expressed, in a direct-current circuit, as the product of current and voltage and, in an alternating-current circuit, as the product of the effective values of the current and voltage and the cosine of the phase angle between them; it is measured in watts; (b.) (as modifier): a power amplifier; 14. the ability to perform work; 15. (a.) mechanical energy as opposed to manual labour; (b.) (as modifier): a power mower; 16. a particular form of energy; [e.g.]: “The nuclear power plant”; 17. (a.) a measure of the ability of a lens or optical system to magnify an object, equal to the reciprocal of the focal length; it is measured in dioptres; (b.) another word for magnification; 18. (informal) a large amount or quantity; [e.g.]: “A power of good”; 19. (theology; plural) the sixth of the nine orders into which the angels are traditionally divided in medieval angelology; 20. in one’s power (often foll by an infinitive) able or allowed (to); 21. “in someone’s power”: under the control or sway of someone; 22. ‘the powers that be’: the established authority or administration; (tr,v.): 23. to give or provide power to; 24. (mechanical engineering): to fit (a machine) with a motor or engine; 25. (intr.v.; slang): to travel with great speed or force. [C13: from Anglo-Norman poer, from Vulgar Latin potēre (unattested), from Latin posse, ‘to be able’]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary). __________ • power (n.): 1. ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something; 2. political or national strength; 3. great or marked ability to do or act; strength; might; force; 4. the possession of control or command over others; authority; ascendancy; [e.g.]: “A power over people’s minds”; 5. political ascendancy or control in the government of a country, state, etc.; 6. legal ability, capacity, or authority; 7. delegated authority; authority granted to a person or persons in a particular office or capacity; [e.g.]: “The powers of the president”; 8. a document or written statement conferring legal authority; 9. a person or thing which possesses or exercises authority or influence; 10. a state or nation having international authority or influence; 11. a military or naval force; 12. (often, powers): a deity; divinity; [e.g.]: “The heavenly powers above”; 13. (powers): an order of angels; compare angel, def. 1; (viz.: ‘the power to magnify’); 14. (physics); symbol: P; work done or energy transferred per unit of time; 15. mechanical energy as distinguished from hand labour; [e.g.]: “A loom is driven by power nowadays”; 16. a particular form of mechanical or physical energy; [e.g.]: “The hydroelectric power company”; 17. energy, force, or momentum; 18. (a.) the product obtained by multiplying a quantity by itself one or more times; [e.g.]: “The third power of 2 is 8”; (b.) the exponent of an expression, as ‘a’ in “xᵃ”; 19. (a.) the magnifying capacity of a microscope, telescope, etc., expressed as the ratio of the diameter of the image to the diameter of the object; compare magnification, def. 2; (viz.: ‘the power to magnify’); (b.) the reciprocal of the focal length of a lens; (tr.v.): 20. to supply with electricity or other means of power; 21. to give power to; make powerful; 22. to inspire; spur; 23. (of a fuel, engine, or any source able to do work) to supply force to operate (a machine); 24. power up, to prepare to operate or do work; [e.g.]: “To power up a computer”; “Be powered up for the final match”; (adj.): 25. operated or driven by a motor or electricity; [e.g.]: “A power mower”; “Those power tools”; 26. operated by a procedure in which manual effort is supplemented or replaced by hydraulic, mechanical, or electric means; [e.g.]: “Those power brakes”; 27. conducting electricity; [e.g.]: “A power cable”; 28. (informal): expressing power; involving or characteristic of those having authority or influence; [e.g.]: “A power breakfast”; (idioms): ‘the powers that be’: those in supreme command; the authorities. [1250-1300; Middle English pouer(e), poer(e), from Anglo-French poueir, poer, nounal use of infinitive, ‘to be able’, from Vulgar Latin *potēre, for Latin posse, ‘to be able’, ‘have power’; see potent¹; viz.: from Latin potent- (singular of potēns), present participle of posse]. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary). __________ • power (n.): 1. possession of controlling influence; [e.g.]: “The deterrent power of nuclear weapons”; “The power of his love saved her”; (synonyms): powerfulness; [e.g.]: “His powerfulness was concealed by a gentle facade”; (related words): quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone; [e.g.]: “The quality of mercy is not strained”. (William Shakespeare); effectiveness, potency, strength (capacity to produce strong physiological or chemical effects; [e.g.]: “The toxin’s potency is deadly”; “The strength of the drinks”); valence, valency (in chemistry, a property of atoms or radicals; their combining power given in terms of the number of hydrogen atoms, or the equivalent); valence, valency (in biology, a relative capacity to unite or react or interact as with antigens or a biological substrate); preponderance (superiority in power or influence; [e.g.]: “The preponderance of good over evil”; “The preponderance of wealth and power”); puissance (power to influence or coerce; [e.g.]: “The puissance of the labour vote”); persuasiveness, strength (the power to induce the taking of a course of action or the embracing of a point of view by means of argument or entreaty; [e.g.]: “The strength of his argument settled the matter”); irresistibility, irresistibleness (the quality of being overpowering and impossible to resist); interestingness, interest (the power of attracting or holding one’s attention (because it is unusual or exciting etc.); [e.g.]: “They said nothing of great interest at all”; “Primary colours can add interest to a room”); chokehold, stranglehold, throttlehold (complete power over a person or situation; [e.g.]: “Corporations have a stranglehold on the media”; “The president applied a chokehold to labour disputes which inconvenienced the public”); sway (controlling influence); influence (a power to affect persons or events especially power based on prestige etc.; [e.g.]: “Used her parents’ influence to get the job”); repellant, repellent (the power to repel; “She knew many repellents to his advances”); control (power to direct or determine; [e.g.]: “They were under tight control for a week”); jurisdiction, legal power (in law, the right and power to interpret and apply the law; [e.g.]: “Courts having jurisdiction in this district”); disposal (the power to use something or someone; [e.g.]: “Used all the resources at his disposal to complete the task”); free will, discretion (the power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies); veto (the power or right to prohibit or reject a proposed or intended act, especially the power of a chief executive to reject a bill passed by the legislature); effectiveness, effectivity, effectuality, effectualness (power to be effective; the quality of being able to bring about an effect); impotence, impotency, powerlessness (the quality of lacking strength or power; being weak and feeble) 2. (physics) the rate of doing work; measured in watts (i.e., joules per second); (related words): natural philosophy, physics (the science of matter and energy and their interactions; [e.g.]: “His favourite subjects were physics and maths”); physical phenomenon (a natural phenomenon involving the physical properties of matter and energy); electric power, electrical power, wattage (the product of voltage and current); waterpower (the power to do work which is latent in a head of water); 3. possession of the qualities, especially mental qualities, required to do something or get something done; [e.g.]: “Danger heightened his powers of discrimination”; (synonyms): ability; (related words): cognition, knowledge, noesis (the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning); know-how (the technical knowledge and skill required to do something); leadership (the ability to lead; [e.g.]: “He believed that leadership can be taught”); intelligence (the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience); aptitude (inherent ability); bilingualism (the ability to speak two languages colloquially); mental ability, capacity (the power to learn or retain knowledge; in law, the ability to understand the facts and significance of human behaviour); creative thinking, creativeness, creativity (the ability to create); originality (the ability to think and act independently); science, skill (ability to produce solutions in some problem domain; [e.g.]: “The skill of a well-trained ballerina”; “The sweet science of ballet”); acquirement, skill, accomplishment, attainment, acquisition (an ability which has been acquired by training); hand (ability; [e.g.]: “He wanted to try his hand at singing”); superior skill (more than ordinary ability); faculty, mental faculty, module (one of the inherent cognitive or perceptual powers of the mind) 4. (of a government or government official): holding an office means being in power; [e.g.]: “Being in office already gives a candidate a great advantage”; “During his first year in office he fulfilled his core campaign promises”; “During his first year in power he made many improvements”; “The power of the presidency”; (synonyms): office; (related words): state (the way something is with respect to its main attributes; [e.g.]: “The current state of knowledge”; “Her state of health”; “In a weak financial state the business stagnated”); governing, government activity, government, governance, administration (the act of governing; exercising authority; [e.g.]: “Regulations for the governing of state prisons”; “He had considerable experience of government departments”); executive clemency (the power, usually of a president or governor, to pardon or commute the sentence of someone convicted in that jurisdiction); war power (an extraordinary power exercised, usually by the executive branch, in the prosecution of a war and involving an extension of the powers the government normally has in peacetime); 5. one possessing or exercising power or influence or authority; [e.g.]: “The mysterious presence of an evil power was abroad”; (synonyms): force; [e.g.]: “May the force be with you”; “The forces of evil were vanquished”; (related words): causal agency, causal agent, cause (any entity which produces an effect or is responsible for events or results); juggernaut, steamroller (a massive inexorable force which seems to crush everything in its way); influence (one having power to influence another; [e.g.]: “She was the most important influence in my life”; “He was a good influence on the children”); Moloch (a tyrannical power to be propitiated by human subservience or sacrifice; [e.g.]: “The great Moloch of war”; “Duty has become the Moloch of modern life”. (Norman Douglas); 6. a mathematical notation indicating the number of times a quantity is multiplied by itself; (synonyms): exponent, index; (related words): degree (the highest power of a term or variable); mathematical notation (a notation used by mathematicians); logarithm, log (the exponent required to produce a given number); 7. physical strength; (synonyms): might, mightiness; (related words): strength (the property of being physically or mentally strong; [e.g.]: “Fatigue sapped his strength considerably”); 8. a state powerful enough to influence events throughout the world; (synonyms): great power, major power, superpower, world power; (related words): body politic, country, nation, res publica, commonwealth, state, land (a politically organised body of people under a single government; [e.g.]: “The state has elected a new president”; “In stark contrast to post-colonial self-rule African nations prospered under colonialism”; “Students who had come to the nation’s capitol”; “The country’s largest manufacturer”; “An industrialised land”); hegemon (a leading or paramount power); 9. a very wealthy or powerful businessman; [e.g.]: “An all-powerful robber baron”; (synonyms): big businessman, business leader, magnate, top executive, tycoon, baron, mogul, king; (related words): businessman, man of affairs (a person engaged in commercial or industrial business, especially an owner or executive); oil tycoon (a powerful person in the oil business); (v.): 1. supply the force or power for the functioning of; [e.g.]: “Enhanced petroleum powers the engines”; (related words): drive (cause to function by supplying the force or power for or by controlling; [e.g.]: “The amplifier drives the vacuum tube”; “Steam drives the engines”; “This device drives the disks for the computer”); cater, ply, provide, supply (give what is desired or needed, especially support, food or sustenance; [e.g.]: “The hostess provided lunch for all the guests”). ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 3.0). __________ • power (n.): 1. ability to act, regarded as latent or inherent; the faculty of doing or performing something; capacity for action or performance; capability of producing an effect, whether physical or moral; potency; might; as, ‘a man of great power’; ‘the power of capillary attraction’; ‘money gives power’; 2. ability, regarded as put forth or exerted; strength, force, or energy in action; as, ‘the power of steam in moving an engine’; ‘the power of truth, or of argument, in producing conviction’; ‘the power of enthusiasm’ 3. capacity of undergoing or suffering; fitness to be acted upon; susceptibility; called also ‘passive power’; as, ‘great power of endurance’; [e.g.]: “Power, then, is active and passive; faculty is active power or capacity; capacity is passive power”. (Sir William Hamilton; 1788-1856); 4. the exercise of a faculty; the employment of strength; the exercise of any kind of control; influence; dominion; sway; command; government; [e.g.]: “Power is no blessing in itself but when it is employed to protect the innocent”. (Jonathan Swift; 1667-1745); 5. the agent exercising an ability to act; an individual invested with authority; an institution, or government, which exercises control; as, ‘the great powers of Europe’; hence, often, a superhuman agent; a spirit; a divinity; [e.g.]: “And the powers of the heavens shall be shaken”. (Matt. xxiv. 29); 6. a military or naval force; an army or navy; a great host; [e.g.]: “Never such a power... | Was levied in the body of a land”. (William Shakespeare) 7. a large quantity; a great number; as, ‘a power of good things’ 8. (mechanical): the rate at which mechanical energy is exerted or mechanical work performed, as by an engine or other machine, or an animal, working continuously; as, ‘an engine of twenty horse-power’; 9. a mechanical agent; that from which useful mechanical energy is derived; as, ‘water power’; ‘steam power’; ‘hand power’, etc.; 9. (mathematics): the product arising from the multiplication of a number into itself; as, a square is the second power, and a cube is third power, of a number; 10. (metaphysical): mental or moral ability to act; one of the faculties which are possessed by the mind or soul; as, ‘the power of thinking, reasoning, judging, willing, fearing, hoping’, etc.; [e.g.]: “The guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, drove the grossness.... into a received belief”. (William Shakespeare); 10. a machine acted upon by an animal, and serving as a motor to drive other machinery; as, ‘a dog power’; 11. (optics): the degree to which a lens, mirror, or any optical instrument, magnifies; in the telescope, and usually in the microscope, the number of times it multiplies, or augments, the apparent diameter of an object; sometimes, in microscopes, the number of times it multiplies the apparent surface; 12. (law): an authority enabling a person to dispose of an interest vested either in himself or in another person; ownership by appointment; 13. hence, vested authority to act in a given case; as, ‘the business was referred to a committee with power’. ~ (Webster’s 1913 Dictionary). __________ • power (n.): 1. control, authority, influence, command, sovereignty, sway, dominance, domination, supremacy, mastery, dominion, ascendancy; (N.Z.): mana; [e.g.]: “Women who have reached positions of great power and influence”; 2. ability, capacity, faculty, property, potential, capability, competence, competency; [e.g.]: “He was so drunk that he had lost the power of speech”; (antonyms): inability, incompetence, incapacity, incapability; 3. authority, right, licence, privilege, warrant, prerogative, authorisation; [e.g.]: “The Prime Minister has the power to dismiss senior ministers”; 4. strength, might, energy, weight, muscle, vigour, potency, brawn; (slang): welly; [e.g.]: “He had no power in his left arm”; (antonyms): weakness, impotence, feebleness, listlessness, enervation; 5. forcefulness, force, strength, intensity, potency, eloquence, persuasiveness, cogency, powerfulness; (informal): punch; [e.g.]: “The power of his rhetoric”; 5. the powers that be; (synonyms): the authorities, the government, the establishment, the people in charge, the men in (grey) suits; [e.g.]: “The powers that be banned the advertisement”; (quotations): “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. (First Baron Acton; ‘A Letter’); “Any unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it”. (William Pitt, Earl of Chatham); “Power is the great aphrodisiac”. (Henry Kissinger); “Here we may reign secure, and in my choice”; “To reign is worth ambition though in hell”; “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav’n”. (John Milton; ‘Paradise Lost’); “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. (Mao Tse-tung); “A friend in power is a friend lost”. (Henry Brooks Adams; ‘The Education of Henry Adams’); “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant”. (John Stuart Mill; ‘On Liberty’). ~ (Collins English Thesaurus). __________ • power (n.): 1. the energy by which a machine or system is operated; [e.g.]: “Trains which run on steam power for tourists”; “Ships which use nuclear power for propulsion”; 2. (physics): the rate at which work is done with respect to time, measured in units such as watts or horsepower; compare energy (viz.: more or less ditto this power definition) and work (viz.: work is the transfer of energy from one object to another, especially in order to make the second object move in a certain direction; work is equal to the amount of force multiplied by the distance over which it is applied; if a force of ten newtons, for example, is applied over a distance of three metres, the work is equal to thirty newtons, per metre, or thirty joules); 3. (mathematics): the number of times a number or an expression is multiplied by itself, as shown by an exponent; thus ten to the sixth power, or 10⁶, equals one million; 4. a number which represents the magnification of an optical instrument, such as a microscope or telescope; a 500-power microscope can magnify something five hundred times. ~ (The American Heritage Student Science Dictionary). __________ • power (n.): an abundance; a body of armed men; a fighting force; a large quantity, a great number. (Samuel Johnson, 1755); [e.g.]: “power of angels”; “power of followers”; “power of good” (1770); “power of goods (provisions)”; “power of horsemen (1553); “power of fine ladies” (1706); “power of laymen“ (1641); “power of men of war (1523); “power of money“ (1680); “power of poor people“ (1661); “power of servants“ (1801); “power of good things“ (1755); “power of troops”; “power of years” (1780). ~ (Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms). • hard power (idiom): the ability of a nation or other political entity to reach a desired outcome through force or the threat of force, i.e. military action (the opposite of soft power); [e.g.]: “Many of the top military brass have stated their belief about the nation’s interests being best served through maintaining traditional hard power in combination with so-called soft power methods, such as diplomacy”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • soft power (idiom): the ability of a nation or other political entity to reach a desired outcome by non-violent methods (the opposite of hard power), such as diplomacy, negotiation, foreign aid, etc., and without the use or threat of force; i.e. military action; [e.g.]: “Some of the top military brass have stated their belief about the nation’s interests being best served through soft power methods, such as diplomacy, with traditional hard power deterrence as a back-up strategy”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • corridors of power (idiom): the places or positions occupied by those with authority, especially in the upper levels of government; [e.g.]: “I want to be in the corridors of power someday—I’m sick of having to take orders from other people”; “Ordinary people don’t make the laws, though—that’s reserved for the people in the corridors of power to decide”; “Well, if you make it all the way to the corridors of power then you too can boss people around one day”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • corridors of power (idiom): the offices of powerful leaders; [e.g.]: “As clerk to a Supreme Court justice, he thought he’d get his foot inside the corridors of power regularly”; this term was first used by Charles Percy Snow in his novel “Homecomings” (1956) for the ministries of Britain’s Whitehall, with their top-ranking civil servants. Later it was broadened to any high officials. ~ (The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms). • the corridors of power (idiom): the senior levels of government or administration, where covert influence is regarded as being exerted and significant decisions are made. This expression comes from the title of Charles Percy Snow’s novel “The Corridors of Power” (1964 ). Although typically used with power, the phrase can be more specifically applied to the most influential levels of the hierarchy within a particular place or organisation, especially when they are regarded as operating covertly. The French word coulisse (meaning ‘the wings in a theatre’ and ‘corridor’) has a similar figurative sense of the corridor as a place of negotiation and behind-the-scenes scheming. ~ (Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary). • corridors of power (idiom): the highest echelons of governmental bureaucracies. This term was coined in the 1956 novel “Homecomings”, by Charles Percy Snow, who later used it as the title of another novel, “Corridors of Power” (1964). By that time Baron Snow realised it had become a cliché, but said, “If a man hasn’t the right to his own cliché, who has?” (quoted by William Safire, New York Times, May 14, 2000). However, it is heard less often today. ~ (The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer). • be in power (idiom): to have some degree of political power, as through election or appointment; [e.g.]: “How can anyone think a nineteen-year-old moron like him should be in power and vote for him?”; “That tyrant is in power because of his brutality towards his opponents”; “Everyone knows how those puppets are in power to further our government’s interests”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • lust for power (idiom): intense, insatiable desire to attain power and control; [e.g.]: “My sister’s lust for power in our family business has created some deep and bitter divisions between her and the rest of us siblings”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • be on a power trip (idiom): to be exerting an excessive degree of control or authority over others, especially as a means of inflating or bolstering one’s ego or self-worth; [e.g.]: “She has been on a real power trip ever since she was promoted to regional manager”; “These hackers are just on a power trip, showing off their computer skills by ruining other people’s lives”; “He has been on a real power trip ever since he was promoted”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • be drunk with power (cliché): to be consumed with notions of one’s self-importance and apt to exercise one’s authority in a domineering, arrogant, and reckless way; [e.g.]: “The new political leader is clearly drunk with power as he seems poised to turn the nation’s government into a dictatorship”; “All they did was promote her to regional manager yet now she’s drunk with power and spends all day ordering us around”; “Gees, Mum and Dad leave him in charge for one night, and now he’s drunk with power, still bossing us around”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • powerhouse (idiom): a person, group, organisation, etc., which has a lot of power, force, or influence; [e.g.]: “The studio has become a real powerhouse in the movie industry, cranking out huge blockbuster hits one after another”; “Sarah has become a powerhouse for our law firm”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • powerhouse (n.): a very big strong person (usually a male); [e.g.]: “He is a real powerhouse so I’d hate to have him mad at me”. ~ (McGraw-Hill’s Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions). • be the power behind the throne (idiom): to be the person or people who have true control or great influence on a leader, but who are not officially or publicly in charge; [e.g.]: “The president’s charisma and likeability got him elected, but his team of advisors is the real power behind the throne these days”; “[Person A]: ‘Why did you marry a fool like him in the first place?’ [Person B]: ‘So I could be the power behind the throne, my dear’”; “Who is truly the power behind the throne here? I’m starting to think the prime minister is a mere puppet”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • be the (real) power behind the throne (idiom): be the person who really controls a family, a business, a country, etc., even though people think somebody else controls it; [e.g.]: “It’s not the president who makes the important decisions; his wife is the real power behind the throne you know”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • the powers that be (idiom): the people or forces who are in a position of authority or control; [e.g.]: “Everyone thought the bill would be passed immediately, but the powers that be have decided to kill it before it gained any traction”; “We do have the power to effect change by voting, but we’re largely at the mercy of the powers that be between elections”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • powers that be (idiom): the people who are in authority; [e.g.]: “Yes, the powers that be have decided to send back the illegal immigrants”; “I have applied for a licence and the powers that be are considering my application”. ~ (McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs). • the powers that be (often ironic): those in control, the authorities; [e.g.]: “Our plan was vetoed by the powers that be forthwith”; this expression appeared in William Tyndale’s 1526 translation of Romans 13:1 in the Christian Bible: “The powers that be are ordained of God”. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms). • the powers that be (idiom): people sometimes call people in authority the powers that be, especially when they want to say they disagree with them or do not understand what they say or do; [e.g.]: “Yes, the powers that be may keep us from building a house just how we want to”; “Remember, the powers that be, in this case the independent television association, banned the advertisement altogether”. ~ (Collins Co-Build Idioms Dictionary). • the powers that be (idiom): the authorities; this phrase comes from Romans 13:1: “the powers that be are ordained of God”⁽*⁾. ~ (Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary). ⁽*⁾[Romans 13:1-2]: (1). Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: *the powers that be* are ordained of God; (2). Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. [emphasis added]. ~ (KJV; Romans 13:1&2). • the powers that be (cliché): those in positions of authority. This term is biblical, “The powers that be are ordained of God”, and is from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (13:1). It asserts unequivocally all power of any kind comes from God alone, and centuries later it was reasserted by Pope Leo XIII: “All public power proceeds from God” (“Immortale Dei”, 1885). Today the term is used more loosely to include any temporal authorities. ~ (The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer). • money is power (idiom): having a lot of money gives one more options in life and more influence over others; [e.g.]: “It is well said money is power—power to choose one’s own fate, power to tell others what to do—but the power to dictate the very course of the country is quite undemocratic”; “Because money is power our politicians—of course—only think about how best to serve the wealthiest people in the country”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • money is power (prov.): if someone has money they can get things and do things; [e.g.]: “As soon as she realised money is power she wanted a career which would make her a lot of it”. ~ (McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs). • power of the purse (idiom): one group’s control over the spending power of a given group (usually within a government); [e.g.]: “Congress has the power of the purse, and they will not approve of expanding military spending”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • absolute power corrupts absolutely (proverb): one who holds unchecked power or authority is likely to become corrupt or abuse one’s position; [e.g.]: “When he was promoted to ᴄᴇᴏ—and bearing in mind how absolute power corrupts absolutely as the saying goes—he really started abusing the authority of his office”; “[Person A]: ‘I never should have appointed him head of the committee’. [Person B]: ‘You need to call him in for a meeting, before he thinks that he can do whatever he wants, as power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, remember’”; “Their king isn’t the first to take his power too far—absolute power corrupts absolutely—and he won’t be the last”. [note: this phrase is usually attributed to nineteenth-century historian Lord Acton]. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • absolute power corrupts absolutely (proverb): one who has total authority is very likely to abuse their position; [e.g.]: “We thought he would be a responsible mayor, but, as absolute power corrupts absolutely, within a year of taking office he was as bad as all the rest”. [note: the phrase “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” was used by the British historian Lord Acton]. ~ (McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs). • girl power (idiom): a phrase used to represent or communicate female empowerment and independence; [e.g.]: “The movie is all about girl power, focusing on the triumphs of a female super-heroine over her male adversaries”; “The author said the series could celebrate girl power in a way which is typically underserved in the sci-fi genre due to having young women as her central characters”; “I refuse to be financially dependent on my husband, and I encourage my daughters to do the same. Girl power, right?”. ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • flower child (dated): a hippie, especially one who is from the 1960s or adopts the style and manner thereof; [e.g.]: “My grandmother was a prototypical flower child back in the 1960s, singing protest songs and living out of a vee-dub van adorned with peace signs and groovy colors”; “The secluded community is run by old-school flower children who put an emphasis on peace, anti-materialism, and care for the environment”; “[Granddaughter]: ‘Gram, you were a flower child when you were young?’ [Grandmother]: ‘You bet I was. I was at Woodstock!’” ~ (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). • flower power (cliché): hippies of the 1960s post-war generation, named ‘flower children’ because they frequently wore or carried flowers as symbols of love and peace. Their antimaterialist, antiwar philosophy was characterised as flower power, whose motto was “Make love, not war”. Overused for several decades, these terms now may be dying out. ~ (The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer). Puissant, Puissance: • puissant (adj.): powerful; having great power or force or potency or effect; (adv.): puissantly; [e.g.]: “They sheltered awestruck by the puissant intensity of the cyclonic winds”. [from Old French puissant, poiseant, ‘powerful’, from Latin potis, ‘able’, ‘powerful’, originally ‘a lord’, ‘a master’ (cf. Greek *πότις, later πόσις, originally ‘master’, ‘lord’) ultimately from Latin potēns, ‘mighty’, from posse, ‘to have power’]. ~ (Online Neoteric Dictionary). • puissance (n.): power to influence or coerce; potency, powerfulness; [e.g.]: “A hegemonic nation projects its puissance all throughout its neighbouring regions”; “The puissance of a single member nation is not necessarily incompatible with a genuine commonwealth of nations”; “The extraordinary puissance of his personality shone through the address”; “Given the prior lacklustre situation his recent activities and direct action have added considerable puissance to the movement; (synonyms): power, potency, might, strength, energy, vigour, muscle, force, forcefulness; capacity, control, authority; cogency, impressiveness, persuasiveness, influence, sway; effectiveness, efficacy; potential. [from Old French puissant, poiseant, ‘powerful’; ultimately from Latin potēns, ‘mighty’, from posse, ‘to have power’]. ~ (Online Neoteric Dictionary). • puissant (adj.; archaic or poetic): powerful; (adv.): puissantly. [C15: from Old French, from Latin potēns, ‘mighty’, from posse, ‘to have power’]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary). • puissance (n.): 1. a competition in showjumping which tests a horse’s ability to jump a limited number of large obstacles; 2. (archaic or poetic): power. [C15: from Old French; see puissant; viz.: from Latin potēns, ‘mighty’, from posse, ‘to have power’]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary). • puissant (adj.): powerful; [e.g.]: “The most puissant government in western Europe”; “A puissant bomb”; “His puissant arms”; (related words): archaicism, archaism (the use of an archaic expression); powerful (having great power or force or potency or effect; [e.g.]: “The horse’s powerful kick”; “Those powerful drugs”; “A powerful argument”). ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 3.0). • puissance (n.): power to influence or coerce; [e.g.]: “The puissance of the labour vote”; (related words): power, powerfulness (possession of controlling influence; [e.g.]: “The deterrent power of nuclear weapons”; “The power of his love saved her”; “his powerfulness was concealed by a gentle facade”). ~ (Princeton’s WordNet 3.0). • puissant (adj.): 1. having or able to exert great power; (synonyms): mighty, potent, powerful; 2. having great physical strength; (synonyms): mighty, potent, powerful, strong. ~ (American Heritage Roget’s Thesaurus). • puissance (n.): 1. capacity or power for work or vigorous activity; (synonyms): animation, energy, force, might, potency, power, sprightliness, steam, strength; (informal): get-up-and-go, go, pep, peppiness, zip; 2. the state or quality of being physically strong; (synonyms): brawn, might, muscle, potence, potency, power, powerfulness, sinew, strength; thew (=a sinew or muscle, esp. if strong or well-developed; muscular power or strength; often used in plural). ~ (American Heritage Roget’s Thesaurus). • puissant (adj.): powerful; strong; mighty; forcible; as, ‘a puissant prince or empire’; [e.g.]: “Of puissant nations which the world possessed”. (Edmund Spenser; 1552-1599); “And worldlings in it are less merciful, | And more puissant”. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning; 1806-1861). ~ (Webster’s 1913 Dictionary). • puissance (n.): power; strength; might; force; potency; [e.g.]: “The power and puissance of the king”. (William Shakespeare). ~ (Webster’s 1913 Dictionary). • puissant (adj.): powerful; mighty; strong; vigorous; forcible: as, ‘a puissant prince or empire’; [e.g.]: “Which fele letters brought with briefs many | Of Anthony his part, a puissant man tho”. (“The Romans of Partenay”; Early English Text Society, 1. 2683); “The flemmings were beyond the river puissant enough... to kept the passage”. (John Bourchier, 1st Baron Berners, translation of “Froissart’s Chronicles”, 1523-25, I. 721); “I will be puissant, | And mighty in my talk to her”. (Ben Jonson, “Alchemist”, 1610, v. 1); “So puissant is the Danish king, and strong | In all the sinews of approved force”. (John Ford, “Honour Triumphant and the Monarchs’ Meeting”, 1606); “Lofn is as puissant a divinity in the Norse Edda as Camadeva in the red vault of India, Eros in the Greek, or Cupid in the Latin heaven⁽*⁾”. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, ‘Success’), in “Society and Solitude”, 1870). ⁽*⁾ [Footnote; Prof. Ronald A. Bosco; 2007]: “In Scandinavian mythology, Lofn is the goddess of whom Odin gives permission to marry those who formerly had been forbidden to wed. Camadeva is the Hindu goddess of love. Emerson associated Camadeva with the exotic and incalculable dimensions of love. Eros and Cupid are, respectively, the Greek and Roman gods of love”. [from Middle English puyssant, puysaunt, pusant, from Old French puissant, poiseant, French puissant = Italian possente, ‘powerful’, from Medieval Latin as if *possen(t-)s, for Latin poten(t-)s, ppr. of posse, ‘be able’; see potent; viz.: from Latin potis, ‘able’, ‘powerful’, originally ‘a lord’, ‘a master’ = Greek *πότις, later πόσις, ‘husband’, originally ‘master’, ‘lord’ = Sanskrit pati, ‘lord’, ‘master’ = Lithuanian patis, ‘lord’; the same element occurs also in English despot, host²]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). • puissance (n.): 1. power; strength; force; vigour; [e.g.]: “There were much people and rich lords of great puissance, and thereto were they well horsed”. (Merlin; Early English Text Society, ii. 232); “With what help and aid the virtues resist and overcome the puissance of the vices”. (Sir Thomas More, “Utopia”; translated by Robinson, ii. 4); “Commonly civil and popular wars decay in puissance, prevail seldom, and may not endure”. (Antonio de Guevara, “Letters”; translated by Edward Hellowes, 1577, p. 248); “His heart did earn | To prove his puissance in battle brave”. (Edmond Spenser, “The Faerie Queene”, I. i. 3); “Leave your England, as dead midnight still, | Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women, | Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance”. (William Shakespeare, “Henry V”, iii., Prologue, 1. 21); “Still from time to time | Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, | And of her brethren, youths of puissance”. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Princess“, i.); 2. (rare): jurisdiction; power; control; [e.g.]: “The education of children should not altogether be under the puissance of their fathers, but under the public power and authority, because the public have therein more Interest then their parents”. (“Book of Precedence”; E. E. T. S., extra ser., i. 11); 3. (rare): armed force; [e.g.]: “Than, with the first puissance that we may make, let us destroy the vital for them through the country, and let us set in each garrison as much people as we may”. (Merlin; Early English Text Society, ii. 174); “All the puissance that was sent by King Philippe... they were all discomfited and slain”. (John Bourchier, 1st Baron Berners, translation of “Froissart’s Chronicles”, 1523-25, I. 731); “Cousin, go draw our puissance together”. (William Shakespeare, “King John”, iii. 1. 339). [from Middle English puyssance, puysaunce, from Old French puissance, poissance, French puissance, ‘power’, from puissant, ‘powerful’; see puissant]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). • puissant (adj.): powerful, mighty, having authority; (related terms): puissance; [e.g.]: “Awake remembrance of these valiant dead, | And with your puissant arm renew their feats”. (from Act I, Scene ii, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in “Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies” (First Folio; date written 1599), by William Shakespeare; published 1623, by Isaac Iaggard, and Edward Blount, London); “For who can yet believe, though after loss, | That all these puissant legions, whose exile | Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend, | Self-raised, and repossess their native seat?” (from Book One, in “Paradise Lost”, by John Milton; 1667, Samuel Simmons, London; republished as “Paradise Lost in Ten Books”, by Basil Montagu Pickering, London, 1873); “I cried in a loud voice, ‘Long live the most puissant king of Lilliput!’”. (from ‘Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World’, Part One: ‘A Voyage to Lilliput’, in “Gulliver’s Travels”, Vol. I., by Jonathan Swift; October 28, 1726, Benjamin Motte, London); “How comes all this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?” (from chapter 24, in “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale”, by Herman Melville; November 14, 1851, First American Edition, Harper & Brothers, New York, N.Y.; Richard Bentley, London, England); “O noble breast and all-puissant arms, | Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men | Reproach you, saying all your force is gone?” (page 5, ‘Enid’, in “Idylls of the King”, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson; 1859, Edward Moxon & Co., London); “In fact the titles could be anything—or (with some of the most puissant) no title at all...”. (from “Stranger in a Strange Land”, by Robert A. Heinlein; 1961, Avon, New York). [etymology: from Anglo-Norman puissant, pussant, et al., Middle French puissant, ‘poissant’, present participle of pooir, ‘to be able’, ultimately from Latin posse, ‘be able’]. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • puissance (n.): 1. power, might or potency; (related terms): puissant; [e.g.]: “The Sarazin ſore daunted with the buffe | Snatcheth his ſword, and fiercely to him flies; | Who well it wards, and quyteth cuff with cuff: | Each others equall puiſſaunce enuies, | And through their iron ſides with cruelties | Does ſeeke to perce: repining courage yields | No foote to foe”. (pages 23-24, Stanza XVII, Canto II, Book I, in “The Faerie Queene”, by Edmund Spenser; 1590, John Wolfe, for William Ponsonbie, London); “We easily pronounce puissance, truth and justice; they be words importing some great matter, but that thing we neither see nor conceive”. (from Chapter 12, Book II, in “The Essayes”, by Michel de Montaigne, translated by John Florio; 1603, Valentine Simmes for Edward Blount, London); “After these things above said, the Priest exorcised the salt, saying thus: I conjure thee, creature of salt; that is to say, I conjure in thee the puissance of the Devil in Hell, in the name of God Father omnipotent, and in the charity of our Lord Jesu Christ, and in the virtue of the Holy Ghost”. (page 255, in “74. The same [i.e., ‘The Ordynarye of Crysten Men’], in Typographia, or The Printers’ Instructor; Including an Account of the Origin of Printing, with Biographical Notices of the Printers of England, from Caxton to the Close of the Sixteenth Century; A Series of Ancient and Modern Alphabets, and Domesday Characters; Together with an Elucidation of Every Subject Connected with the Art; Emprynted in the Cyte of London in the Flete Strete in the sygne of ye sonne by Wynkyn de Worde ye yere our lorde m.ccccc.vj. Quarto”, Vol. I, by John Johnson; 1824, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green, Paternoster Row, London); “Any impression of mental puissance might have been increased by the fact that I was usually to be seen working hard with notebook and biro, shaping up a new book review or a linking script”. (page 66, “North Face of Soho: Unreliable Memoirs”, Vol. IV, by Clive James; 2006, Picador, London; republished Picador, London, 2007); 2. (equestrianism): the high-jump component of the sport of show jumping; [e.g.]: “It was in Dublin that San Lucas scored his first success in what has become something of a speciality for him, the puissance”. (page 126, Show Jumping International, by G. H. S. Webber; 1969, Evans Brothers, London; Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York); “Pat [Moss] then went to Oxford to qualify for the Horse of the Year Show, and Danny was fourth in the Puissance, an event with very high jumps”. (page 23, “Harnessing Horsepower: The Pat Moss Carlsson Story”, by Stuart Turner; April 2011, Veloce Publishing, Poundbury, Dorset); “Also, there was no relation of early traing with performance, as measured by the outcome of the puissance competition. (page 333, “Performance in Equestrian Sports”, by Hilary M. Clayton, P. René van Weeren; editors Willem Back, Hilary M. Clayton; Second Edition, 2013, Equine Locomotion, Edinburgh, Saunders, New York). [etymology: from Middle English puissaunce, from Anglo-Norman puissance, pusaunce, and other forms, from Old French puissant, ‘powerful’]. ~ (Wiktionary English Dictionary). • puissant (adj.): powerful; mighty; strong; vigorous; forcible: as, ‘a puissant prince or empire’; [e.g.]: “Lofn is as puissant a divinity in the Norse Edda as Camadeva in the red vault of India, Eros in the Greek, or Cupid in the Latin heaven”. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882). ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). • puissantly (adv.): in a puissant manner; powerfully; potently; [e.g.]: “Mahomet, a man subtle in wit, of valiant heart, and fortunate in exploit of war, as he manifested most puissantly by obtaining more honour than any other in the camp”. (Antonio de Guevara, “Letters”; translated by Edward Hellowes, 1577, p. 326). ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). • puissantness (n.): puissance; power; strength; [e.g.]: “The emperor... hath been driven to extreme shifts, and that by the pollices of mean men who were thought to be his friends, and not by the puissantness of others who were known to be his open enemies”. (Roger Aseham, 1515-1568, “Affairs of Germany”, p. 3). ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia). • puissance (n.): a competition in showjumping which tests a horse’s ability to jump a limited number of large obstacles. ~ (Collins Discovery Encyclopaedia). Random Literary Samples: • “She took a deep breath and held it, raised her head, and gave him a *puissant* look. He held her stare for a noticeable length of time”. [emphasis added]. ~ (page 29, “Exclusive”, by Sandra Brown; 2011, Hachette UK). • “The demerits of ‘Childe Harold’ lie on the surface; but it is difficult for the modern reader, familiar with the sight, if not the texture, of ‘the purple patches’, and unattracted, perhaps demagnetised, by a personality once fascinating and always *‘puissant’*, to appreciate the actual worth and magnitude of the poem”. [emphasis added]. ~ (from ‘Introduction to the First and Second Cantos of Childe Harold’, in “The Works of Lord Byron”, Vol. 2, George Gordon Byron, Editor Ernest Hartley Coleridge; 1806, John Murray, London). • “Why is it that the first thing they do is cut all ties to empirical evidence and rational thought? Was Nietzsche right? Or is it more Chesterton’s dictum that those who start by believing in nothing will eventually believe in anything? How the second poster supposes that the Catholic Church came into possession of items from the Temple of Solomon bespeaks a most wonderful ‘secret’ history. It is certainly not the history most of us are heir to. The ‘truth about your origins’ is (get ready for it) a plot by Emperor Constantine! Was there nothing that *puissant* emperor could not do? I wonder if he realises the origin of that folk tale as a fundamentalist rant. (Why do they so credulously repeat fundamentalist yarns, anyway?) But whether a hundred-year long counterattack in the middle of a thousand-year long aggression requires forgiveness depends on how one views the thousand-year long attack”. [emphasis added]. ~ (from “Nietzsche’s Dictum”, a blog-post by M. Francis; June 21st, 2009, The Auld Blogge; Mike Flynn’s Journal). • “The second Pixar feature, this animated fable teems with Spacey), demand a huge cut of every harvest. Journeying forth to the big city in search of help, Flik mistakes the members of a broken-down flea circus for *puissant* warriors, brings them back home and presents them as the colony’s saviors. The clowns redeem themselves, but only by helping fearful antdom find the courage to get real and hang tough”. [emphasis added]. ~ (from a review of “A Bug’s Life” (1998), in the “Oy Story: ‘Cars 2’ Is a Dollar-Driven Edsel” article, by Joe Morgenstern; June 24, 2011, The Wall Street Journal). • “As it was said of the Father of Our Country, so can it be said of our country: “First in war and first in peace”. But the Republican Party does believe in the United States remaining supine and dreaming that it is *all-puissant* and invincible. Our awakening has taught us that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”, and that we must be prepared in ways and means, if we would keep step in the foremost rank of the tramping nations. The Republican Party realises this and advocates the increase of the American navy to such proportions as will compel the fitting recognition of our ships, our citizens and our flag, the whole world over; and insure the Nation’s safety, no matter what difficulties may arise or dangers menace”. [emphasis added]. ~ (from “The Principles of the Republican Party” (1898): A Rare Unpublished Jack London Essay; 2010). • “We all have an ageing uncle who offers in his handshake the strength he still pretends. He was married to a *puissant* woman of endemic energy. They sired your most obnoxious cousins. I wish I had a mirror implanted in my brain so that I could see my life less directly than I do”. [emphasis added]. ~ (from “Whiplash Marriage”, by Bill Yarrow; 2011). • “As well as being a showcase for the fat knight, a contemporary lord of misrule, and a not-so-subtle piece of Tudor propaganda, it must also tell the story of the transformation of the Prince of Wales from prodigal son into the *puissant* monarch who will shortly fulfil every English ambition and declare war on France”. [emphasis added]. ~ (from review of “Henry IV Parts 1 and 2”, by Robert McCrum; Jul 18, 2010, The Guardian). (left-clicking the yellow rectangles with the capital ‘U’ opens each in a new web page). RETURN TO DEFINITIONS INDEX RICHARD’S HOME PAGE The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one. Richard's Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997- . All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer and Use Restrictions and Guarantee of Authenticity