empowered

E1M3P3O1W4E1R1E1D2

adjective

Having been given powers.

Less commonScrabble 17

Meanings

adjectiveempowered (comparative more empowered, superlative most empowered)

comparative more empowered · superlative most empowered

  1. Having been given powers.

    Empowered staff deliver the goods and exceed your expectations. Disempowered staff develop a 'sullen obedience' where they stop driving new initiatives and just await orders.

    2024 January 10, Chris Green, “Empowered...energised... and managing for success”, in RAIL, number 1000, page 22
  2. USHaving been given the power to make choices relevant to one's situation.

    Policy moderation in the past, I argued above, has depended on a coalition between civic elites and newly empowered minorities—or at least a resolve by civic elites to discourage a racially polarizing politics of law and order.

    1995, Chicago Assembly, Lawrence B. Joseph, Crime, Communities, and Public Policy, page 288
  3. USActing with confidence.
verb
  1. participlepastsimple past and past participle of empower
nounempowered (plural empowereds)

plural empowereds

  1. One who is empowered.

    The coolest of these "empowereds" laugh with the shock jocks ogling the hotties and ragging on the fatties and the prudes.

    2003, Elle - Issue 220, page 188
    2 more examples

    The category of sex tourism, which assimilates phenomena ranging from southeast Asian brothels run for foreign men by international crime cartels with the covert support of national governments (see Hall, 1992 and Truong, 1990) to the 'sugar mummie' phenomenon wherein older women tourists travel to tourist centres in order to enjoy sexual encounters with local youths, is well suited to represent the expolitative character of much of the tourism trade between the developed and less-developed countries in so far as it foregrounds the destructive playing out of empowereds' irresponsible desires on the bodies of those immobilized by poverty and lack of alternative opportunities.

    1996, Tom Selwyn, The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism, →ISBN, page 83

    And if he had gotten his hands on Casey while the Heroics kids were fighting those controlled empowereds, he would've made sure that she felt every single bit of agony that he hadn't been able to inflict on her when she was.

    2016, Alex Kost, Vigilance: A Heroics Novel, →ISBN

Synonyms & antonyms

adjectiveinvested with legal power or official authority especially as symbolized by having a scepter

Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Origin

  1. Proto-Indo-European*h₁én
  2. Proto-Italic*en
  3. Proto-Italic*en-
  4. Latinin-
  5. Old Frenchen-
  6. Middle Englishen-
  7. Englishem-
  8. Proto-Indo-European*pótis
  9. Proto-Italic*potis
  10. Proto-Indo-European*h₁es-
  11. Proto-Indo-European*h₁ésti
  12. Proto-Indo-European*bʰuH-
  13. Proto-Indo-European*bʰúHt
  14. Proto-Italic*som
  15. Proto-Italic*possom
  16. Latinposse
  17. Vulgar Latinpotēre
  18. Old Frenchpooir
  19. Anglo-Normanpoer
  20. Middle Englishpower
  21. Englishpower
  22. Englishempower
  23. Englishempowered

From empower + -ed.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

empowered. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/empowered

MLA

“empowered.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/empowered. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “empowered,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/empowered.

Source: empowered on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.