Definition of "puissance" [pu•is•sance]

• Power; might. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Could pissens be French-based Creole (maybe Haitian, if the ad was made in America), as in French "puissance" (power, potential, see Chinese neng 能)?"
• "O thou of beautiful smiles, Word is a cow, in consequence of her puissance which is both divine and not divine."
• "Well, what Spenser did with practically every Western myth, epic, and writer before him makes Faulkner look like a pre-schooler using slight of hand to hide a coin), his passion, his facility with language (that is, if you ignore the occasional "puissance"), his psychological insight."