Word Finder - powerless

definition

Lacking sufficient power or strength.

example

I admit that I am powerless over my hatred towards white people in ways that I am unable to recognize fully, both at this time and in the past.

definition

Lacking legal authority.

example

The traffic warden was powerless to stop me driving away.

The walk calmed his irritation at being powerless for the first time since the Schism.

The things I wanted to do I was powerless to accomplish.

It was plundered by Henry VIII., to whom the memory of Becket was specially obnoxious; but the reformers were powerless to expunge the name of the saint from the Roman calendar, on which it still remains.

His enemies, headed by his elder brother Mikhail and the vicechancellor Vorontsov, powerless while his diplomacy was faultless, quickly took advantage of his mistakes.

Words are powerless to describe the desolation of that prison-house, or the joy of the soul that is delivered out of its captivity.

Stuyvesant conducted a successful expedition against the Swedes on the southern border of New Netherland in 1655; but he was powerless against the English.

The determination to limit still further the power of the executive was at the bottom of this fatal parsimony, with the inevitable consequence that, while the king and the senate were powerless, every great noble or lord-marcher was free to do what he chose in his own domains, so long as he flattered his "little brothers," the szlachta.

He perceived that Darwinism attributed too much to accident, and was also powerless to explain the origin of life and of consciousness.

Her first opponent she put out of action in twelve minutes, and, passing on, Hood immediately engaged other ships, the "Guerrier" being left powerless to fire a shot.

Haunted by the recollection of that formidable conflict and lulled in the security of the Great Interregnum, which was to render Germany long powerless, the papacy thought merely of the support that France could give, and paid no heed to the dangers threatened by the extension of Charles of Anjou's monarchy in central and northern Italy.

It was from the young Greenland colony that an attempt was made to establish a new outpost in Vinland, but plans for permanent settlement were given up on account of the hostility of the natives, with whom the settlers felt powerless to grapple.

When a "party of Resistance" came into office with Casimir-Perier in March 1831, the speech from the throne proclaimed that "France has desired that the monarchy should become national, it does not desire that it should be powerless"; and the migration of the royal family to the Tuileries symbolized the right of the king not only to reign but to rule.

Melanchthon felt himself powerless to restrain the tumult.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

Athens thus became mistress of the Aegean, while the synod at Delos had become practically, if not theoretically, powerless.

This meant that the synod was quite powerless.

Now, the dykes were cut and the sluices opened, and Amsterdam was covered by a wide inundation, against which the invader was powerless.

In 1554, when Charles was meditating his abdication, and wished to secure the position of his son, he summoned Philip to Flanders again, and arranged the marriage with Mary, queen of England, who was the daughter of his sister Catherine, in order to form a union of Spain, the Netherlands and England, before which France would be powerless.

Although supported by Spain he could not obtain from this quarter an army sufficiently strong to crush the Bohemians, and for some time he remained powerless and inactive in Vienna.

Such a body, Metternich held, " powerful for defence, powerless for offence," would form a guarantee of the peace of central Europe - and of the preponderance of Austria; and in its councils Austrian diplomacy, backed by the weight of the Habsburg power beyond the borders of Germany, would exercise a greater influence than any possible prestige derived from a venerable title that had become a by-word for the union of unlimited pretensions with practical impotence.

The cause of this is to be sought rather in the daily friction of a system which had ceased to be efficient and only succeeded in irritating the public opinion it was powerless to curb.

In 1865 it adjudged Bishop Gray's letters patent, as metropolitan of Cape Town, to be powerless to enable him "to exercise any coercive jurisdiction, or hold any court or tribunal for that purpose," since the Cape colony already possessed legislative institutions when they were issued; and his deposition of Bishop Colenso was declared to be "null and void in law" (re The Bishop of Natal).

Melanchthon, powerless against the enthusiasts with whom his co-reformer Carlstadt sympathized, appealed to Luther, still concealed in the Wartburg.

Up to this time, John Quincy Adams was regarded as belonging to the Federalist party, but he now found its general policy displeasing to him, was frowned upon, as the son of his father, by the followers of Alexander Hamilton, and found himself nearly powerless as an unpopular member of an unpopular minority.

Thereupon a fierce insurrection broke out, against which the governor of Africa was powerless.

This yearning is a dumb unintelligent longing, which moves like a heaving sea in obedience to some dark and indefinite law, and is powerless to fashion anything in permanence.

He rushed among the crowd, but was powerless to quell the tumult.

Though Frederick failed to subdue the republics, the failure can scarcely be said to reflect either on his prudence as a statesman or his skill as a general, for his ascendancy was finally overthrown rather by the ravages of pestilence than by the might of human arms. In Germany his resolute will and sagacious administration subdued or disarmed all discontent, and he not only succeeded in welding the various rival interests into a unity of devotion to himself against which papal intrigues were comparatively powerless, but won for the empire a prestige such as it had not possessed since the time of Otto the Great.

In winter, however, the Parthians were powerless to wage war, as the moisture of the atmosphere relaxed their bows.

The revolt of Nadir Mirza had, as before explained, drawn the shahs attention to Khorasan in the early part of his reign; but, although quiet had for the moment been restored at Meshed by the presence of the royal camp, fresh grounds of complaint were urged against the rash but powerless prince, and recourse was had to extreme measures.

In May and June the shah issued proclamations declaring his fidelity to the constitution, and promising an amnesty to all political offenders; but he was powerless to stay the advance of the combined Bakhtiari and Nationalist troops, who entered Teheran.

More than most men, Fenelon "wanders between two worlds - one dead, the other powerless to be born."

He takes refuge in the temple at Delphi; but, though Apollo had ordered him to do the deed, he is powerless to protect his suppliant from the consequences.

Against such a combination the Castilians were powerless; a truce was arranged in 1387 and renewed at intervals until 1411, when peace was concluded.

So great was the press that the "battles" of the second line which followed the first were unable to reach the front and stood on the slope, powerless to take part in the battle on the crest.

The king and the dauphin, powerless in the hands of Duke John and the Parisians, appealed secretly to the Armagnac princes for deliverance.

On the 10th of February 1829 he suffered a second attack of paralysis which rendered his right side quite powerless, but under the care of his brother, Dr John Davy (1791-1868), he rallied sufficiently to be removed to Geneva, where he died on the 29th of May.

Quinine is apparently powerless to kill the organism when it is in its reproductive phase.

The Minor Church included many Polish magnates, but their adoption of the views of Sozzini, which precluded Christians from magisterial office, rendered them politically powerless.

Even archaeology, which can often sketch the main outlines of a people's history, is here practically powerless, owing to the insufficiency of data.

Between the popular League and the menace of the Protestants it was a question whether the new monarch was to be powerless Tb in his turn.

Paris became the centre of a sceptical society, which the decrees of bishops and councils, and the enthusiasm of the orthodox doctors and knights-errant of Catholicism, were powerless to extinguish.

Sagasta derived much benefit from the divisions which made democracy powerless; and he Was able to cope with Carlism chiefly because the efforts of the pretender himself abroad, and of his partisans in Spain, were first restrained and then decisively paralysed by the influence of foreign courts and governments, above all by the direct interference of the Vatican in favor of the Spanish regency and of the successor of Alphonso XII.

Charles was powerless openly to resent these outrages, but he obtained from the provincial assemblies the money refused him by the statesgeneral, and deferred his vengeance until the dissensions of his enemies should offer him an opportunity.

He seized the Norman towns held by the Navarrese, while Henry of Trastamara invaded Navarre, and imposed conditions of peace which rendered his lifelong enemy at last powerless.

The troops sent against them, under General Pepe, himself a Carbonaro, sympathized with the mutineers, and the king, being powerless to resist, granted the constitution (13th of July), which he swore on the altar to observe.

The young king passed his early years amid the terrible anarchy in his island kingdom, which Innocent was powerless to check; but his education was not neglected, and his character and habits were formed by contact with men of varied nationalities and interests, while the darker traits of his nature were developed in the atmosphere of lawlessness in which he lived.

It's left the Black God in an advantageous position, since all but the White and Grey Gods are powerless.

I'm surprised you're not interested in a ceasefire with me, since your Guardians are powerless, Jonny said.

Damian understood the delicate balance between Good and Evil, just as he understood the Black God had the power to overturn that balance as long as the Guardians were powerless.