puissance

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)power, might or potency

   “The Sarazin ſore daunted with the buffe / Snatcheth his ſword, and fiercely to him flies; / Who well it wards, and quyteth cuff with cuff: / Each others equall puiſſaunce enuies, / And through their iron ſides with cruelties / Does ſeeke to perce: repining courage yields / No foote to foe.”

   “We easily pronounce puissance, truth and justice; they be words importing some great matter, but that thing we neither see nor conceive.”

   “After these things above said, the Priest exorcised the salt, saying thus: I conjure thee, creature of salt; that is to say, I conjure in thee the puissance of the Devil in Hell, in the name of God Father omnipotent, and in the charity of our Lord Jesu Christ, and in the virtue of the Holy Ghost […]”

   “Any impression of mental puissance might have been increased by the fact that I was usually to be seen working hard with notebook and biro, shaping up a new book review or a linking script […].”

2. (countable, uncountable)The high-jump component of the sport of show jumping.

   “It was in Dublin that San Lucas scored his first success in what has become something of a speciality for him, the puissance.”

   “Pat [Moss] then went to Oxford to qualify for the Horse of the Year Show, and Danny was fourth in the Puissance, an event with very high jumps.”

   “In a study of horses during a puissance competition that started at a height of 1.80 m and ended in the last round at 2.27 m, success was significantly positively correlated with the following variables at lift-off: vertical velocity of CM, height of CM, distance of CM from the fence; and was significantly negatively correlated with the distance of the leading hind limb to the CM.”

3. (alt-of, countable, uncountable)Alternative letter-case form of puissance.