omnipotentiality

From omni- (prefix meaning ‘all’) +‎ potentiality (“quality of having potential; (philosophy) capacity or possibility to be something”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌɒmnipəˌtɛnʃiˈælɪti/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌɑmnipəˌtɛn(t)ʃiˈæləti/,

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ælɪti
• Hyphenation: om‧ni‧pot‧ent‧i‧al‧i‧ty

omnipotentiality (usually uncountable, plural omnipotentialities)

1. (chiefly psychology, uncountable) The characteristic or feeling that anything is possible, and there are no limits on what may be achieved; (countable, rare) an instance of this.
   • 1878, Wm N Haggard, “Recognition VI. The Essential Activity of the Divine Absolute Mind, ”, in Creation, as a Divine Synthesis. A Contemplative Treatise concerning the Inter-relations between Deity and His Creation, as Discoverable by and to the Human Understanding, London: J. Ridsdale, , →OCLC, page 36:

     In the faculty of absolute concretive conception, the Divine Self-existent Mind was intrinsically possessed of the omnipotentiality to involve and evolve, an omnimultiple, omnivaried and omnimutable creation; and truly, with no eternal, objective, absolute cosmos to cognize, inevitable necessity required that Deity should first concretively conceive the varied subjects, He would fain contemplate.

   • 1894 May, James A. Carmichael, “Life in the Cell. Comparative Morphanthrolopogy.”, in Egbert Guernsey, Alfred K. Hills, editors, The New York Medical Times, a Monthly Journal of Medicine, Surgery and the Collateral Sciences, volume XXII, number 5, New York, N.Y.: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 135, column 1:

     We have already, and variously, accepted and maintained, as far as in us lay the power, as our "shibboleth" and "coign of vantage," the omni-potentiality of cell force in making life appear where life was not, and in forming and developing each and every vital entity, from the lowest to the highest, and adapting them to the conditions by which they are surrounded, […]

   • 1970 December 2 (date delivered), Kenneth Eric Nelson, witness, “Statement of Maj. Kenneth Eric Nelson, M.D., Chief, Psychiatric Consultation Service, Letterman General Hospital, San Francisco, Calif., Department of the Navy”, in Drug and Alcohol Abuse in the Military: Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Alcoholism and Narcotics of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Ninety-first Congress, Second Session on Examination of Drug Abuse and Alcoholism in the Armed Forces , Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, published 1971, →OCLC, page 696:

     In this maturational process, one has to give up the many comforts of dependency, and many fantasies about one's omni-potentiality; for to commit one's self to something necessarily means to surrender something else.

   • 1981, David L. Gutmann, “Psychoanalysis and Aging: A Developmental View”, in Stanley I. Greenspan, George H. Pollock, editors, The Course of Life: Psychoanalytic Contributions toward Understanding Personality Development (DHHS Publication; number (ADM) 81-1000), volume III (Adulthood and the Aging Process), Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office [for the] Mental Health Study Center, Division of Mental Health Service Programs, National Institute of Mental Health; Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Services Administration, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, →OCLC, page 501:

     As such, the infant supports the illusion of omnipotentiality and thus becomes a fit vehicle for whatever splitoff and grandiose fantasies the father might still entertain for himself.

   • 2005, Thomas E. Brown, “Adulthood: Managing Responsibilities, Finding a Niche”, in Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults (Yale University Press Health & Wellness), New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 146:

     The young man's comment "I've always had difficulty making choices" reflects a problem with "omnipotentiality"—a fantasy-based attitude, common among adolescents, that all things are possible, all choices are open. Usually this attitude is dispelled during mid- to late adolescence as most individuals are forced to confront the reality that some doors are not open to them.

   • 2015, Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte, “(All) Politics (are) from the Devil: Taking [Giorgio] Agamben to Hell (and Back?)”, in Benjamin W. McCraw, Robert Arp, editors, The Concept of Hell, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN:

     Power, through its perversion of means and ends, not only considers omnipotence the greatest perfection, but, in its perverted form of greatest perfection, aims at the culmination of all potentialities – omni-potentialities […]. This means that, at the heights of its omnipotence, power claims that all is potentially possible, but only as long as one does not attempt to put it (all potentialities) into action.

   • 2017, Shahrzad Siassi, “The Trajectory of Remorse to Regret in Old Age”, in Salman Akhtar, Shahrzad Siassi, editors, Regret: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms, Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, part I (Developmental Realms), page 45:

     For some, the manic "omnipotentialities" of adolescence and the idealistic optimism of youth harshly juxtapose with an ego-depleting nostalgic focus on decline, irreversible losses, missed opportunities, and a negative and unfavorable review of the past which generates deep regret and a perverse failure of optimism […]

• omni-potentiality