WORD OF THE DAY: PUISSANT
adjective | PWISS-unt
Puissant is a synonym of powerful used to describe something with puissance—that is, strength or power.
// The creatures in her fantasy novel are wielders of puissant magic, able to strike down enemies by harnessing the power of weather phenomena like lightning and tornadoes.
EXAMPLE OF PUISSANT
“The show is light on tech, but the accompanying images … pour through as addendums to Felder’s puissant passion of Liszt’s Liebesträume or Beethoven’s Für Elise and land with great effect.” — David John Chávez, The Mercury News (San Jose, California), 1 Feb. 2026
DID YOU KNOW?
Puissant has some powerful ties to some more commonplace English words. Although puissant has a considerably fancier feel than power and potent, all three words share the same Latin ancestor: posse, a verb meaning “to be able.” Potent came from potent-, potens, a form of posse. Power came to us by way of Anglo-French poer, which itself comes from an alteration of posse. From poer also came the Anglo-French adjective pussant, meaning “able” or “powerful,” and English speakers borrowed that to form puissant in the 15th century.
Merriam Webster Dictionary
