empower
Americanverb (used with object)
-
empowers,
present (3rd person singular)
-
empowered,
past participle, past
-
empowering
present participle
-
to give power or authority to; authorize, especially by legal or official means.
I empowered my agent to make the deal for me. The local ordinance empowers the board of health to close unsanitary restaurants.
- Synonyms:
- qualify, license, commission, warrant
-
to enable or permit.
Wealth empowered him to live a comfortable life.
verb
-
to give or delegate power or authority to; authorize
-
to give ability to; enable or permit
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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empowersimple
-
empowerssimple
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have empoweredperfect
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has empoweredperfect
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am empoweringprogressive
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are empoweringprogressive
-
is empoweringprogressive
-
have been empoweringperfect progressive
-
has been empoweringperfect progressive
Past
-
empoweredsimple
-
had empoweredperfect
-
was empoweringprogressive
-
were empoweringprogressive
-
had been empoweringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of empower
Explanation
Empower means "give power or authority to." When you educate children and believe in them, you empower those kids to go after their dreams. Empower might seem like a new word, but it's been around since the 17th century. Today, empower often refers to helping someone realize their abilities and potential, perhaps for the first time. For example, in the 1960s, when women felt like second-class citizens, the women's movement empowered them to stand up and demand their equal rights.
Vocabulary lists containing empower
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Michelle Obama's final address as First Lady (2017)
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"Hip-Hop as Culture" and "I Am Somebody"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
They say you do not empower your staff to make decisions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2026
If he does, he’ll empower more kids—of all ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds—to access more learning options and better schools.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
"It must ensure that proportionate age restrictions go hand-in-hand with robust safety measures so that digital environments both protect and empower children, by design and default," they wrote.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
"All platforms should empower parents and support teens in these ways because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another," Meta said.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
My promise to myself was to survive so that I could escape Little Rock and empower myself with enough education to come back home and change everything.
From "March Forward, Girl" by Melba Pattillo Beals
Will it be centralized and restricted to a few institutions, or will it be a tool that empowers everyone?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
She added: "The new uniform empowers girls and volunteers to embrace their individuality."
From BBC ● Jul. 26, 2026
"We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere," an OpenAI spokesperson said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026
“We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 10, 2026
Today, art historians like to say that Les Demoiselles empowers viewers, which is what they say about the Mona Lisa too—they mean that both paintings are open to interpretation.
From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day
The stakes with a personal agent are elevated because agents are empowered to buy products, set appointments and book travel by themselves—all of which could cost users money if the agent errs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
Once that safety is established, Park is able to help his students feel empowered by their story, Mejia said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
Grande reassured fans that the decision came from a "thoughtful, empowered place", and had been planned "a long time ago".
From BBC ● Aug. 16, 2026
After all, the very nature of how Green Lanterns obtain their superhuman abilities involves cosmically empowered rings choosing their wearers.
From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2026
Legal rulings empowered people with developmental disabilities to refuse treatment and created rights for the mentally disabled that made forced institutionalization much less common.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
For people tinkering around the edges, with the goal of feeling stronger and more energetic, the glut of recommendations in here could feel empowering, perhaps like a sturdy reference text.
From Slate ● Sep. 18, 2026
In my fifth decade, I’d found a web-learning technique that was workable and empowering.
From Salon ● Aug. 24, 2026
The FCC said it is “working to constrain the outsized power of national programmers while empowering local TV stations to serve their licensed communities.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
It’s so empowering to go back to this world that I crafted and this character that means so much to me and my fans.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
In this sense, mathematics is just the opposite of constraining; it is empowering, and at the service of anyone who cares to use it.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
