''potentate'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''potentate'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

potentate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

potentate (plural potentates)

• A powerful leader; a monarch; a ruler.
  • ✤ But Kings and mightieſt Potentates muſt die,
    For that’s the end of humane miſerie.¹
  • ✤ She was now one of a group of oriental beauties who, in the second act of the comic opera, were paraded by the vizier before the new potentate as the treasures of his harem.²
  • ✤ Life for ordinary barons in Outremer Jerusalem was probably better than for kings in Europe, where even potentates wore unlaundered wool and lived in bare-stone draughty keeps with rough furniture.³
  • ✤ Anyone expecting such a speech has forgotten that Trump’s first impulse is to please. He is constitutionally incapable of displeasing a live audience, let alone a foreign potentate who has recently lassoed him with a golden chain.⁴
  • ✤ Bad news for a certain kind of pedantic patriot (look away now, Jacob Rees-Mogg). Prince Charles has debased the English language – and in a letter to a foreign potentate, no less.⁵
  • ✤ The place in question was the stretch of Campanian coastline around the Bay of Naples. Originally a quiet retreat of rugged cliffs and healing thermal springs, by the middle of the first century B.C., the bay was teeming with military potentates, spendthrift aristocrats and the people who could afford to keep up with them.⁶
• A powerful polity or institution.
• (derogatory) A self-important person.
• (humorous) Someone acting in an important role.
  • ✤ “Those foreigners,” thought the female potentate of the Sun, “won’t know what to order; but I’ll show them what a good supper is.”⁷

Adjective

potentate (comparative more potentate, superlative most potentate)

• (obsolete) Regnant, powerful, dominant.

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /ˈpəʊ.tən.teɪt/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (US) IPA: /ˈpoʊ.tən.teɪt/

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]: ↩

2. 1900, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie: ↩

3. 2011, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East, page 269: ↩

4. 2017 May 21, Graeme Wood, “Trump Complies Perfectly With the Saudi Line”, in The Atlantic ‎${}^{[1]}$, archived from the original on 23 June 2017: ↩

5. 2019 April 18, David Shariatmadari, “Ize on the prize: is Prince Charles the last guardian of British spelling?”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[2]}$, →ISSN, archived from the original on 16 August 2019: ↩

6. 2025 August 16, Honor Cargill-Martin, “Caligula in the Hamptons”, in The New York Times ‎${}^{[3]}$, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 August 2025: ↩

7. 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 194: ↩

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