unpower

English

Etymology 1

From un- (lack of) +‎ power.

Noun

unpower (uncountable)

1. Lack of power; weakness.
   • 1995, Kenneth Maly, The Path of Archaic Thinking:

     Paradoxically, it is this unpower that proceeds to produce the suppressive superpower of metaphysics and that inscribes in Sallis' s work or in his "deconstructive" strategy — I would even say, in his hyperdeconstructive strategy — [...]

   • 1996, Bradley S. Epps, Significant violence:

     I have referred to Makbara 's (lost) inspiration as 'unpower', a term that I take from Derrida's reading of Artaud. As Derrida explains, unpower is not simply a lack of power, not merely impotence or verbal sterility; unpower is actually inspiration [...]

   • 2015, Hent de Vries, Nils F. Schott, Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World:

     But what does it mean to question the question of the principle of reason? Here, it seems to me, we may risk introducing the concept (but is it a concept?) of unpower.

Etymology 2

From un- (reversive prefix) +‎ power.

Verb

unpower (third-person singular simple present unpowers, present participle unpowering, simple past and past participle unpowered)

1. (transitive) To remove the power from; power down or power off
   • 2010, Deron Rennick, The Webscrolls of Dim Sorcery:

     “Desperate to retrieve the webscrolls and unpower the staff, which could only be done by tossing it into The Saline Sea, [...]”

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “unpower”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)