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powerful

[pou-er-fuhl]

Example Sentences

adjective

having or exerting great power or force.

physically strong, as a person: a large, powerful athlete.

producing great physical effects, as a machine or a blow.

potent; efficacious: a powerful drug.

having great effectiveness, as a speech, speaker, description, reason, etc.

EXPAND

having great power, authority, or influence; mighty: a powerful nation.

Chiefly South Midland and Southern U.S. great in number or amount: a powerful lot of money.

COLLAPSE

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English powarfull. See power, -ful

Related forms

pow·er·ful·ly, adverb

pow·er·ful·ness, noun

o·ver·pow·er·ful, adjective

o·ver·pow·er·ful·ly, adverb

o·ver·pow·er·ful·ness, noun

EXPAND

qua·si-pow·er·ful, adjective

qua·si-pow·er·ful·ly, adverb

su·per·pow·er·ful, adjective

ul·tra·pow·er·ful, adjective

un·pow·er·ful, adjective

COLLAPSE

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. 2012.
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Powerful is always a great word to know.

So is slumgullion. Does it mean:

a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc.

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

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Example Sentences

Monday's powerful earthquake killed an unknown number of students and instructors.

These entrepreneurs often operate outside not only the powerful state-controlled companies, but outside the country's laws.

Yet teens gravitate toward peers for another, more powerful reason: to invest in the future rather than the past.

EXPAND

Monday's powerful earthquake killed an unknown number of students and instructors.

These entrepreneurs often operate outside not only the powerful state-controlled companies, but outside the country's laws.

Yet teens gravitate toward peers for another, more powerful reason: to invest in the future rather than the past.

Belief is powerful medicine, even if the treatment itself is a sham.

Sending a man to the moon required an overhaul of the entire space program, involving more powerful rockets and new spacecraft.

Foot-wide white flowers open at night, have a powerful vanilla fragrance, and hang limp by morning more add to my plant list.

The news abounds with stories of powerful men behaving badly.

My family made a powerful sacrifice that still humbles me to this day.

Forget the trade unions: the government has made a much more powerful enemy.

Leopards are graceful and powerful big cats closely related to lions, tigers, and jaguars.

Such powerful storms are exactly what scientists predict to become more frequent as the climate changes.

Zéphirin is known for his powerful imagination and devastating social commentary.

Betacyanin, the pigment that gives beets their color, is a powerful antioxidant.

Personal supercomputers may not be as powerful as the mighty mainframes, but they are still leagues above their desktop cousins.

In fight for federal student aid, home-school lobby has powerful friends.

The lectures are interesting, but the big draw is the chance to talk to other powerful people in the corridors.

The powerful sound evokes the deity to visit voodoo mask dances.

Hansen builds a powerful case for global warming based on the geologic record and simple thermodynamics.

We are an order of magnitude more powerful than anyone else.

In addition, flax seed is high in soluble fiber, a powerful cholesterol fighter.

They could also be the inspiration for powerful new medications.

The civic and moral dimensions also are diminished by the powerful market-based orientation to economic and social problems.

It was powerful yet at peace internally and externally.

They have already developed a synthetic version of one of the venom's compounds that has promise as a powerful painkiller.

Two thousand years ago, it was the capital of a powerful trading empire.

The ranch and the mountains form a powerful physical barrier, and also a cultural one.

Just glancing at the specs, both phones look pretty powerful.

One remarkable combination that's as powerful as it is easy to use.

It holds an animal whose ancestors swam freely in the sea to rocks that are often battered by powerful waves.

They sometimes climb trees to prepare an ambush, killing their prey with one powerful bite.

The researchers contend that communication is a more powerful force than camouflage in the evolution of chameleon color change.

His efforts create a powerful vortex, which sucks his meal of brine shrimp to the surface.

Many companies, it seems, would also prefer computers to get cheaper rather than more powerful.

Ring-tailed lemurs have powerful scent glands and use their unique odor as a communication tool and even as a kind of weapon.

Adored by some people, detested by others, the aroma is so powerful that a few ripe berries can perfume a room.

Brands are not as powerful as their opponents allege, nor is the public as easily manipulated.

The world economy in the ninth century had two powerful engines.

The animal had large, powerful jaws, which secured the predator a place atop the local food chain.

It owes its influence over the business cycle to its powerful lever over liquidity.

Martial artists have long known that the human body can be a powerful weapon.

One hears the throaty rumble of an old but powerful engine.

They are powerful hunters that travel many miles to find prey, such as elk and wild boar, on nocturnal hunts.

Each exhibit is a compelling and powerful example of sacrifice, courage and patriotism.

Although shark attacks are rare, a bite from these powerful sea creatures can be deadly.

Buchwald poked fun at the follies of the rich, the famous and the powerful for half a century.

And you will be part of something new that is going to have a powerful positive impact on the world in many ways.

Follow the path of the powerful hurricane in this video timeline.

Posture can affect how powerful you feel--and how powerful you.

Even if a hurricane doesn't directly hit land, it can still have a powerful effect in the form of waves and rip currents.

Foot-wide white flowers open at night, have a powerful vanilla fragrance, and hang limp.

No one expects the powerful to use them as a tool against the weak.

Psychodynamic therapy has been caricatured as navel-gazing, but studies show powerful benefits.

Professionals quickly confirmed the sighting and started aiming their powerful telescopes at the.

And, as with many powerful natural phenomena, the question arises:.

And the blow that caused it would surely have been powerful enough to smash ecosystems around the world.

Its jaws and teeth were so powerful it may have eaten small dinosaurs as well as fish.

It has the squat, powerful physique of a prizefighter.

Our diversity of products and powerful portfolio of brands lead the way in design, craftsmanship and innovation.

Chief among those goals is to educate the next generation of creative thinkers and to be a powerful force of good in the world.

Pheromones thus amplify the limited intelligence of the individual ants into something more powerful.

The method may become a powerful tool for predicting eruptions.

Posture can affect how powerful you feel--and how powerful you are.

It's also a screaming-fast and powerful machine for work and play.

The response, he recalls, was immediate and powerful.

The powerful magnetic fields that block light from escaping the sun's interior burst.

Since trumpet creeper produces aerial roots that have a powerful adhesive compound, keep it away from painted stucco.

Wheeler described as a powerful combination of challenges to the.

Solar cells work because visible and ultraviolet light are powerful enough to knock electrons free from atoms.

Many people want to adopt powerful breeds, but they usually don't know what they are getting themselves into.

Self-deception proves itself to be more powerful than deception.

Everything about him was against his being a powerful speaker.

The law professor turned his artistic talents into a powerful tool for battling overzealous copyright laws.

But two powerful groups have remained determinedly sceptical:.

Powerful flukes can propel a whale for many days without a single stop.

Understanding of evolution is fostering powerful technologies for health.

Individually these were all powerful exhibitions, but combined they have demonstrated contemporary art's transformative capacity.

It's not that powerful men are all evil and always take advantage of their positions.

Acolytes of the accused's powerful family bribed and threatened witnesses.

Laptop computers get smaller, lighter and more powerful each year.

The various tribes were much alike in their religious beliefs, which centered on a powerful unseen god or great spirit.

But they have one powerful stimulant to keep them going: the outsized cult of.

In addition, that powerful advocate may no longer be in a position to help you later.

Much of the book is concerned with the struggle between rulers in different parts of the world trying to forge powerful states.

Andy rigs a tiny camera hidden in a seal decoy to film the great white's powerful jaws in action.

They could connect their health with their surroundings, and that kind of connection can lead to powerful activism.

After the solitude of graduate research, that's a powerful tonic.

All those events would be powerful enough, but all tend to happen a long way away.

Settlements exercise a powerful influence in shaping the world's different cultural, political, and economic systems.

Evolution is an immensely powerful creative process.

The narrative that casts an academic career as a calling is powerful and compelling.

So powerful were his opponents, he says, that they leaned on suppliers to boycott him.

Visit the sites of some powerful recent quakes and set off a quake of your own.

Then, even after years of abstinence, consuming a single drink can set off a powerful longing to imbibe more and more.

Harnessing water under powerful pressure thus could blast away the hillsides concealing gold ore.

He also showed that the area was a hotspot for powerful cyclones capable of washing trees, ie potential rafts, into the oceans.

Take a look at the swirling shape of a galaxy or the powerful curl of a ram's horn.

At the heart of the weirdness for which the field of quantum mechanics is famous is the wavefunction, a powerful but.

Its aluminum skin, lit by powerful dive lights suspended from the barge, shone faintly in the greenish murk.

Studying abroad can be a uniquely powerful and personal experience.

Work is now under way to see if it can also stop more powerful bullets.

Since then the columns have multiplied within the mammalian brain to make more powerful minds.

But with inexpensive sensors and powerful microprocessors now available, biometric technology is certain to become more pervasive.

The sublime of the ocean to me is a really powerful metaphor.

But she became an extension of an already powerful network of violence toward people of color in the academy.

Big powerful donors and private individuals all need to fear their government.

Mental strength is uniquely human and the key to controlling animals that are more physically powerful than us.

The ability to compare genomes is a powerful tool for identifying the origins of a natural disease outbreak or bioterrorism.

There are many wonderful images, but this one invokes so many powerful feelings.

The use of powerful antipsychotic drugs has increased in children as young as three years old.

There is a problem with such a powerful pulse, though.

Diversity can be a powerful tool--but it is one that can cut both ways.

Powerful telescopes show us the remote planets and faraway galaxies that our puny retinas cannot see.

It is a powerful way of appreciating and respecting the diversity of the world.

But a combination of powerful blows could still have a shattering impact.

The gulls were pecking into living whale flesh with their sharp, powerful beaks.

Powerful searchlights were employed to illuminate the baseball field.

What a great way to remind people of our connection to the written word, and how powerful it can be.

Around her neck, she wears a tiny medallion bearing the picture of her powerful father.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

powerful (ˈpaʊəfʊl)

—*adj*
1.	having great power, force, potency, or effect
2.	extremely effective or efficient in action: a powerful drug; a powerful lens
3.	dialect large or great: a powerful amount of trouble

—*adv*
4.	dialect extremely; very: he ran powerful fast

'powerfully

—*adv*

'powerfulness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

FOLDOC

Computing Dictionary

PowerFuL definition

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

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