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• n  the quality of lacking strength or power; being weak and feeble

• Pu Yi proved a brittle ruler who lashed out at cowering servants to compensate for his sense of powerlessness.
• For 20 years Soviet authorities have suppressed the publication of Rybakov's broadly autobiographical novel about power and powerlessness under Stalin just before the purges of the .
• Screaming powerlessly at a defenseless television set is a metaphor for the sense of powerlessness that unites these elements in liberal rage.

• impotence
• impotency

• power

News & Articles

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• Well: ‘If This Was Your Mother, Doctor…’
  A common question helps family members make sense of the confusion, desolation and powerlessness that so often defines the hospital experience, but leaves a newcomer to clinical medicine feeling vulnerable and violated.        
  Aug. 1, 2013 - New York Times

Quotes

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• Lee Wing-tat in The Associated Press
  There is a large group of middle-class citizens who feel a strong powerlessness about the inability of the constitutional system to progress,Democrat Lee Wing-tat said.
• President Bush in WorldGolf.com
  For generations of African-Americans, the noose was more than a tool of murder. It was a tool of intimidation that conveyed a sense of powerlessness to millions,Bush said.
• Didier Drogba in International Herald Tribune
  We (the players) all feel that the story ended too quickly. It leaves us with a feeling of something unfinished, and also of powerlessness,Drogba said. "We are only employees. I will not hide that I have taken this episode very badly."