potential
/pə(ʊ)ˈtɛnʃ(ə)l
/adjective [attributive]
Having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future: a campaign to woo potential customers...
- In particular, it claims the cost of the service is likely to turn-off potential customers.
- Links are also being developed with potential partners in New York, Dubai and Helsinki.
- Instead the study was just a process to find out the potential capacity for new homes.
Synonyms
possible, likely, prospective, future, probable, budding, in the making;
latent, embryonic, developing, dormant, inherent, unrealized, undeveloped
noun
1 [mass noun] Latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness: a young broadcaster with great potential [count noun]: the potentials of the technology were never wholly controllable...
- Following on from this, I think this story has excellent potential if developed cleverly.
- He was talented and hard-working and had such potential for success in life.
- The merit acquired from this gift is used to trigger the forces of latent positive potential in oneself or others.
Synonyms
possibilities, potentiality, prospects;
promise, capability, capacity, ability, power;
aptitude, talent, flair
informal what it takes
1.1 (often potential for/to do something) The possibility of something happening or of someone doing something in the future: pesticides with the potential to cause cancer...
- They were of course unaware of the latent potential for economic growth just around the corner.
- It has experienced strong growth in the past three years and has good potential for future growth.
- More to the point still, is this potential to anger particularly strong in the media?
2 Physics The quantity determining the energy of mass in a gravitational field or of charge in an electric field: a change in gravitational potential [count noun]: measurements of induced electrical potentials...
- The normal conduction of action potentials is reliant upon sodium channels.
- Electrical action potentials, osmotic perturbations or chemical signals may trigger these waves.
- Various measurable bits in the universe have vastly different potentials to have a causal impact.
Derivatives
potentiality
/ noun ...- The potentialities and possibilities of the electronic medium have been put to use to achieve this end.
- The nature of such powers (also referred to as dispositions, tendencies, potentialities and capacities) is a hotly disputed issue in contemporary metaphysics.
- It has little or no real interest in other skills, abilities, or potentialities, not to mention the needs, desires, imagination, or commitment to intellectual life of faculty members.
potentialize
- The ritualised practice of cruising potentialises the automobilised space of the street and carpark so it becomes an event-space where the incorporeal event of ‘nothing’ happens.
- In that sense, being non-intelligible logically potentialises new identities to form, allowing indeterminacy to wriggle out from under the pall of subjection.
- It is the type of development that might have been further potentialised in terms of its capacity for international and global linkage.
Origin
Late Middle English: from late Latin potentialis, from potentia 'power', from potent- 'being able' (see potent1). The noun dates from the early 19th century.
Rhymes
- non-collegiate
- non-com
- non-combatant
- non-combative
- non-combustible
- non-comedogenic
- non-commercial
- non-commissioned
- non-commission officer
- non-committal
- non-committalism
- non-committally
- non-communicable
- non-communicant
- noncommunicating
- non-communicative
- non-communion
- non-communist
- non-commutative
- non-commutativity
- noncompact
- non-compearance
- non-compete
- non-competitive
- non-complex