Meaning & use
potentate
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Meanings
nouncountable
A ruler who holds great power and answers to few or no limits on how it is used.
Grammar: Has a regular plural: one potentate, several potentates.
Patterns
- a potentate of somewhere
- the potentate who rules something
The visiting potentate arrived with a convoy of forty cars and a personal chef.
Merchants in the old city paid heavy taxes to the local potentate or lost their market stalls.
History books describe the king as a cruel potentate who ignored every petition from his people.
nouncountablefigurativehumorous
Someone in a modern organization who acts like an all-powerful ruler and expects everyone to obey.
Grammar: Used figuratively and usually with a mocking tone: a media potentate.
Patterns
- a corporate potentate
- a potentate of something
The newspaper owner behaved like a potentate, overruling editors whenever he felt like it.
Every department feared the finance director, a potentate who signed off on nothing quickly.
In that tiny village club, the treasurer was a self-appointed potentate.
Word forms
| plural | potentates |
|---|
Common combinations
- an absolute potentate
- Under the old system, the prince was an absolute potentate with no parliament to check him.
- a local potentate
- Travelers had to bring gifts to each local potentate along the trade route.
- a foreign potentate
- A foreign potentate was invited to the palace for the signing ceremony.
- an oil potentate
- The film showed an oil potentate buying a famous football club.
- a media potentate
- The media potentate decided which stories would appear on the front page.
Synonyms and how they differ
- monarch
- Monarch simply names a king or queen and carries no hint of unchecked power, whereas potentate stresses how much authority the person holds.
- despot
- Despot is openly negative and means a cruel, unjust ruler, while potentate can sound merely grand or mocking.
- sovereign
- Sovereign is a neutral, formal term for the supreme ruler of a state, without the suggestion of showy power that potentate carries.
- tyrant
- Tyrant focuses on oppressive, cruel use of power and is much harsher than potentate, which may only suggest pomp.
Opposites
Word family
- potent adjective
- having great strength or power
- potency noun
- the quality of being powerful or strong
- potential adjective
- possible, capable of developing into something
- potentially adverb
- in a way that could happen in the future
Commonly confused: potentate or potentiate?
potentate vs potentiate
Potentiate is a rare medical verb meaning to make a drug or effect stronger; it names an action, while potentate names a ruler.
Practice
The factory owner acted like a ______, deciding everything without asking anyone and punishing those who disagreed.
Choose one answer.
Potentate fits because it describes someone who holds and uses sweeping power. A colleague would be an equal, so the picture of unchecked control would not fit.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “potentate”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.