Of feble trees ther cometh feble ympes.
Chaucer, The Monkes Prologue (Morris, iii. p. 200).
The sudden taking away of those most goodly and virtuous young imps, the Duke of Suffolk and his brother, by the sweating sickness, was it not also a manifest token of God’s heavy displeasure towards us?—Becon, A Comfortable Epistle.
The king returned into England with victory and triumph; the king preferred there eighty noble imps to the order of knighthood.—Stow, Annals, 1592, p. 385.
| Impotent, | } |
| Impotence. |
The inner connexion between weakness and violence is finely declared in Latin in the fact that ‘impotens’ and ‘impotentia’ imply both; so once did ‘impotent’ and ‘impotence’ in English (see Spenser’s Fairy Queen, ii. 11, 23), though they now retain only the meaning of weak.
An impotent lover
Of women for a flash; but his fires quenched,
Hating as deadly.
Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, act iii. sc. 2.