as in inability
the lack of sufficient ability, power, or means
cursed his powerlessness to affect the outcome of his friend's life-threatening illness
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Recent Examples of powerlessness
One year before Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire published their compendium of Greek myths, Cicellis released her second work of fiction, The Way to Colonos, which ruthlessly dramatizes the limits of individual freedom and the agony of facing one’s powerlessness.
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Rachel Vorona Cote, The Atlantic, 5 Jan. 2026
There is no solution except to grow up, acknowledge our powerlessness, and come to terms with our despair.
—Rosa Lyster, Harpers Magazine, 30 Dec. 2025
Dope Sick Love gets its power from its powerlessness.
—Kevin Jacobsen, Entertainment Weekly, 27 Dec. 2025
Some find comfort in attending vigils or religious services to honor the victims, as coming together in solidarity can ease the sense of powerlessness.
—Kriti Gupta, Refinery29, 17 Dec. 2025
Would-be autocrats create environments of fear and powerlessness, using intimidation, overwhelming force or political and legal attacks, and other coercive tactics to force acquiescence and chill democratic pushback.
—Shelley Inglis, The Conversation, 19 Oct. 2025
This grim reality evokes a sense of sorrow and powerlessness among women in Paina Bujurg.
—Aishwarya S. Iyer, CNN Money, 16 Oct. 2025
That type of breaking is undisciplined indulgence that is normally meant to terrorize and threaten people and is driven by people who operate from a place of smallness, ego fragility, and fear of their own powerlessness.
—Brené Brown, Fortune, 14 Oct. 2025
Koestler suggests that a stroke of good fortune, or a vision of the sublime, may evoke a sense of powerlessness — of being rapt, overwhelmed, enraptured, entranced — which overlaps with the helplessness of loss and defeat, and which evokes a similar surrender.
—Big Think, 23 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for powerlessness
inability
Noun
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Russia and China, though chastened by their inability to protect Venezuela, retain a strong interest in propping up Havana, given Cuba’s location just 90 miles south of Key West.—
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Forster’s novel may have been written in 1913 (and published, posthumously, in 1971), but its portrayal of Alec and Maurice’s inability to openly articulate their love remains evergreen.—
Cite this Entry
“Powerlessness.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/powerlessness. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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