OK, when reading a British journal article yesterday for my class I encountered a word I had never seen or heard before, a rare enough occurrence for me that it made me curious.

I wonder how many of you know what this word means without having to look it up? The word is : puissance.

If I give you some context, do you think you can figure it out?

“Tribes provide shelter and a way of coping with globalization and other trans-national developments, unstoppable American puissance and the apprehension felt by some over a Britain dominated by Brussels.”

Source: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Imagining the New Britain, (Routledge: New York, 2001), 4.