potent

Before potent described medicines, arguments, or smells, it belonged to the vocabulary of mastery. Latin potis meant “powerful” or “lord,” and when it teamed up with esse, “to be,” the phrase potis esse meant literally something like “to be powerful” or “to be able.” The expression contracted into posse, while its participle potens—“being able”—eventually walked into Middle English in the early 15th century. That same ancient lordly root appears in potentate and omnipotence, so a potent argument and an omnipotent deity are linguistic cousins separated mainly by scale. The word also developed a sexual sense by 1893, and today “potent” can describe anything from a drug to a cheese whose smell could overthrow a small room: power, in this word, is whatever makes its presence impossible to ignore.