noun
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latent or inherent capacity or ability for growth, fulfilment, etc
-
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:
Recall that the internet had supposedly rewritten the book on investment value and human potentiality.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 2026
Today’s teens face a yawning chasm of potentiality.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2024
The participants were surveyed between workshops and asked to rank indicators related to the future potentiality of the technology.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 26, 2024
“What was the lost potentiality? What symphonies weren’t written? What cures weren’t found? What children weren’t raised with love?”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2023
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
They are important because they reaffirm the place of form and imagination in times that would deny their potentialities.
From New York Times ● Jul. 28, 2022
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
To be truly useful, an analogy must be precise not only in its actualities but in its potentialities.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 6, 2017
The future is more interesting when it’s treated precisely as what it is: a set of potentialities and probabilities.
From Slate ● Oct. 2, 2013
Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.
From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright
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.
