Definitions

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  • noun Plural form of potentate.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • (Let me hasten to add, o Penguin potentates, that we also talked about Jon and Lane Smith's forthcoming Viking title Cowboy and Octopus.)

    East Side, West Side, Roger Sutton 2007

  • (Let me hasten to add, o Penguin potentates, that we also talked about Jon and Lane Smith's forthcoming Viking title Cowboy and Octopus.)

    Archive 2007-06-01 Roger Sutton 2007

  • The usual assortment of Senators and media potentates is howling that the wiretaps are “illegal,” done “in total secret,” and threaten to bring us a long, dark night of fascism.

    Think Progress » Move Over Supreme Court: Rice Anoints Gonzales As “The Highest Legal Authority In The Country” 2005

  • Were the dresses of the ministers of those lately called potentates, who attended on that occasion, taken from the wardrobe of that property-man at the opera, from whence my old acquaintance,

    The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12) Edmund Burke 1763

  • Church has attained such greatness in temporal power, seeing that from Alexander backwards the Italian potentates (not only those who have been called potentates, but every baron and lord, though the smallest) have valued the temporal power very slightly — yet now a king of France trembles before it, and it has been able to drive him from Italy, and to ruin the Venetians — although this may be very manifest, it does not appear to me superfluous to recall it in some measure to memory.

    The Prince 1515

  • 'potentates' continue to act with impudence and impunity.

    FACT - Freedom Against Censorship Thailand 2009

  • And the popes of the late 15th and early 16th centuries were all engaged in a struggle with secular potentates — especially the kings of France and Spain — to defend the autonomy of the church.

    Scholars: TV's Borgias saga true to sinful pope 2011

  • And the popes of the late 15th and early 16th centuries were all engaged in a struggle with secular potentates — especially the kings of France and Spain — to defend the autonomy of the church.

    Scholars: TV's Borgias saga true to sinful pope 2011

  • There may be (and likely are) Shakespeare/Euler level geniuses in our midst entirely unrecognized by the self-appointed potentates of our over-specialized disciplines.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Too Smart to Become the Chess World Champion? 2010

  • So the comm/sub/caucus potentates will put in what they want and say they can't support a bill without it.

    A Waste of Talent 2009

Comments

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  • potentates of the establishment... Joe Cleary

    July 17, 2007

  • ...their great Dictator, whose attempt

    At first against mankind so well had thrived

    In Adam's overthrow, and led their march

    From Hell's deep-vaulted den to dwell in light,

    Regents, and potentates, and kings, yea gods...

    paradise regained -Milton

    July 15, 2008