Word.ws English Dictionary

puissance

Syllables: puis·sance/ˈpjuːɪ.s(ə)ns/

puissance noun: power, might or potency.

puissance: power, might or potency
Image: Laup F, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

puissance (countable and uncountable, plural puissances)

  1. power, might or potency
    • The Sarazin ſore daunted with the buffe / Snatcheth his ſword, and fiercely to him flies; / Who well it wards, and quyteth cuff with cuff: / Each others equall puiſſaunce enuies, / And through their iron ſides with cruelties / Does ſeeke to perce: repining courage yields / No foote to foe.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza XVII, pages 23–24
    • We easily pronounce puissance, truth and justice; they be words importing some great matter, but that thing we neither see nor conceive.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  2. The high-jump component of the sport of show jumping.
    • It was in Dublin that San Lucas scored his first success in what has become something of a speciality for him, the puissance.1969, G. H. S. Webber, Show Jumping International, London: Evans Brothers; New York, N.Y.: Van Nostrand Reinhold, →OCLC, page 126
    • Pat [Moss] then went to Oxford to qualify for the Horse of the Year Show, and Danny was fourth in the Puissance, an event with very high jumps.2011 April, Stuart Turner, Harnessing Horsepower: The Pat Moss Carlsson Story, Poundbury, Dorset: Veloce Publishing, →ISBN, page 23

Noun (2) capitalized: Puissance

Puissance (countable and uncountable, plural Puissances)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of puissance.

Forms of puissance

pluralpuissances
alternative formPuissance
pluralPuissances

Origin of puissance

From Middle English puissaunce, from Anglo-Norman puissance, pusaunce, and other forms, from Old French puissant (“powerful”).

Questions about puissance

What does puissance mean?
Puissance means power, might or potency.
What part of speech is puissance?
Puissance is a noun.
How do you pronounce puissance?
Puissance is pronounced /ˈpjuːɪ.s(ə)ns/ (UK).
What is the plural of puissance?
The plural of puissance is puissances.

Words near puissance in the dictionary

  1. Puinavi
  2. PUIs
  3. puisne
  4. puisnes
  5. puisny
  6. puissance
  7. puissances
  8. puissant
  9. puissantly
  10. puissantness
  11. puit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: puissance (page history and authors); Puissance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-puissance.ogg.

Cite this entry: “puissance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/puissance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.