the.com/impotence

means The inability to perform, produce, or act effectively — literally a lack of power, whether physical, political, or practical.

from From Latin impotentia, 'lack of power' — built from in- ('not') plus potens, 'powerful, able' (the same root that gives us 'potent' and 'potential'). Potens itself traces to posse, 'to be able.' The word originally covered any kind of powerlessness — weak rulers, feeble arguments — and only later narrowed, in English usage, toward its now-dominant sexual sense, a shrinking of meaning that itself is a small tragedy of specificity.