prepotent

From Latin praepotens.

• IPA^(key): /pɹɪˈpoʊtənt/

prepotent

1. Very powerful; superior in force, influence, or authority; predominant.
   • 1521, Henry Bradshaw, The Holy Lyfe and History of saynt Werburge‎, London: Richard Pynson, Book 1, Chapter 16:

     To ordre his subiectes after true iustice / As a prepotent prince

   • 1897, William Dean Howells, chapter 49, in The Landlord at Lion’s Head‎, New York: Harper, page 392:

     […] Jeff’s eyes were dry, though his face was discharged of all its prepotent impudence.

   • 1919, Henry Blake Fuller, chapter 33, in Bertram Cope’s Year‎, Chicago: R.F. Seymour, page 306:

     […] if they had subordinated themselves, docilely and automatically, to the prepotent social and academic figures of the society about them, that in no wise detracted from the favorable impression they had made on her.

   • 1975, Charles Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge University Press, Part 2, Chapter 4, p. 142:

     […] the exigencies of awareness are that we focus on certain dimensions of the objects before us, make certain ways of seeing them prepotent.

2. (biology) Characterized by prepotency.
   • 1868, Charles Darwin, chapter 13, in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication‎, volume 2, London: John Murray, page 28:

     When one parent alone displays some of the newly-acquired and generally inheritable character, and the offspring do not inherit it, the cause may lie in the other parent having the power of prepotent transmission.

   • 1916, C. Alphonso Smith, O. Henry Biography‎, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, Chapter 3, p. 45:

     […] the mother strain, if not prepotent in the sense of science, seems to me to have outweighed that of any other relative of whom we have record.

• “prepotent”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Borrowed from Latin praepotens.

prepotent m or n (feminine singular prepotentă, masculine plural prepotenți, feminine and neuter plural prepotente)

1. very powerful