noun
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latent or inherent capacity or ability for growth, fulfilment, etc
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a person or thing that possesses such a capacity
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of potentiality
From the Medieval Latin word potentiālitās, dating back to 1615–25. See potential, -ity
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:
The answer, the author wrote, depended on whether “every boom carries with it the potentiality of a serious relapse.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 6, 2026
Today’s teens face a yawning chasm of potentiality.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2024
During the workshops, the participants were asked to think about this technology from the perspective of IFGs, to imagine how this technology might be adopted in the future and to assess its future potentiality.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 26, 2024
Classic Hollywood directors like David Lean and Douglas Sirk knew the amorous potentiality contained in the human face, harnessing its elastic electricity to illuminate soaring embraces and aching breakups.
From New York Times ● Feb. 9, 2024
We are cultural animals and it is the richness of our culture which allows us to accept our undoubted potentiality for violence but to believe nevertheless that its expression is a cultural aberration.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
People who in the past would have felt too afraid to experiment with their gender or sexuality for fear of the stigma that might entail may now be more willing to explore those potentialities.
From Salon ● Jun. 17, 2022
Indeed, Heisenberg said that quantum particles “are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”
From New York Times ● May 8, 2018
To be truly useful, an analogy must be precise not only in its actualities but in its potentialities.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 6, 2017
These potentialities still exist at Glastonbury and other festivals, even if only as an echo.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 18, 2014
His military aide, Navy Captain John H. Morse Jr., seconded his opinion: “You may detect some feeling that clean weapon potentialities have been over-stated and over-simplified recently,” he wrote Lawrence.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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.
