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Definition of powerful - 4 dictionary results

pow⋅er⋅ful

  [pou-er-fuhl]
Use powerful in a Sentence
–adjective
1. having or exerting great power or force.
2. physically strong, as a person: a large, powerful athlete.
3. producing great physical effects, as a machine or a blow.
4. potent; efficacious: a powerful drug.
5. having great effectiveness, as a speech, speaker, description, reason, etc.
6. having great power, authority, or influence; mighty: a powerful nation.
7. Chiefly South Midland and Southern U.S. great in number or amount: a powerful lot of money.
Origin:
1350–1400; ME powarfull. See power, -ful

Related forms:
pow⋅er⋅ful⋅ly, adverb
pow⋅er⋅ful⋅ness, noun

Synonyms:
1. forceful, strong. Powerful, mighty, potent suggest great force or strength. Powerful suggests capability of exerting great force or overcoming strong resistance: a powerful machine like a bulldozer. Mighty, now chiefly rhetorical, implies uncommon or overwhelming strength of power: a mighty army. Potent implies great natural or inherent power: a potent influence. 5. influential, convincing, forcible, cogent, effective.

Antonyms:
1. weak.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To powerful
pow·er·ful   (pou'ər-fəl)   
adj.  
  1. Having or capable of exerting power.
  2. Effective or potent: a powerful drug.
  3. Chiefly Upper Southern U.S. Great: "[Everybody had] a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all" (Mark Twain).
adv.   Chiefly Upper Southern U.S.
Very: It was powerful humid.
pow'er·ful·ly adv., pow'er·ful·ness n.
In the Upper Southern United States the words powerful and mighty are intensives used frequently in the same way as very: Your boy's grown powerful big. The new baby is mighty purty. Powerful is used as an adjective in some expressions: 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 amount." This sense appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as common in dialectal British English of the 18th and 19th centuries: "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. Colloquial English is always on the lookout for ways to make language more vivid with new intensives. We think of the Upper Southern part of the United States as linguistically conservative, but in fact it has preserved uses of power, powerful, and mighty that were innovative in their time.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Powerful

Pow"er*ful\, a. 1. Full of power; capable of producing great effects of any kind; potent; mighty; efficacious; intense; as, a powerful man or beast; a powerful engine; a powerful argument; a powerful light; a powerful vessel.

The powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities. --Shak.

2. (Mining) Large; capacious; -- said of veins of ore.

Syn: Mighty; strong; potent; forcible; efficacious; energetic; intense. -- Pow"er*ful*ly, adv. -- Pow"er*ful*ness, n.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : powerful
Spanish: potente; poderoso,
German: mächtig,
Japanese: 強力な
More Translations »

PowerFuL language
A language combining functional programming and logic programming, using "angelic Powerdomains".
(1998-06-30)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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