different between reach vs power

English

Etymology

From Middle English rechen, from Old English r??an (“to reach”), from Proto-West Germanic *raikijan, from Proto-Germanic *raikijan?, from the Proto-Indo-European *rey?- (“to bind, reach”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?i?t??/
• Rhymes: -i?t?
• Homophone: reech

Verb

reach (third-person singular simple present reaches, present participle reaching, simple past and past participle reached or (obsolete) raught)

1. (intransitive) To extend, stretch, or thrust out (for example a limb or object held in the hand).

2. (transitive) To give to someone by stretching out a limb, especially the hand; to give with the hand; to pass to another person; to hand over.

3. (intransitive) To stretch out the hand.
4. (transitive) To attain or obtain by stretching forth the hand; to extend some part of the body, or something held, so as to touch, strike, grasp, etc.

5. (intransitive) To strike or touch with a missile.

6. (transitive, by extension) To extend an action, effort, or influence to; to penetrate to; to pierce, or cut.
   • 1889, The Kindergarten-Primary Magazine (volume 1, page 119)

     A few words, lovingly, encouragingly spoken failed to reach her heart.
7. (transitive) To extend to; to stretch out as far as; to touch by virtue of extent.

8. (transitive) To arrive at (a place) by effort of any kind.
   • 1705-1715, George Cheyne, Philosophical Principles of Religion Natural and Revealed

     the best Accounts of the Appearances of Nature (in any single Instance how minute or simple soever) human Penetration can reach, comes infinitely short of its Reality
9. (transitive, figuratively) To make contact with.

   Synonyms: contact, get hold of, get in touch

10. (transitive, figuratively) To connect with (someone) on an emotional level, making them receptive of (one); to get through to (someone).

    What will it take for me to reach him?

11. (intransitive, India, Singapore) To arrive at a particular destination.
12. (transitive) To continue living until, or up to, a certain age.

13. (obsolete) To understand; to comprehend.

    • Do what, sir? I reach you not.

14. (obsolete) To overreach; to deceive.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of South to this entry?)

15. To strain after something; to make (sometimes futile or pretentious) efforts.
    • 2015, Janet S. Steinwedel, The Golden Key to Executive Coaching

      Repetitious comments are other examples of introjects that we take on as if they were truths. These include: You're lazy; you're selfish; you'll never amount to anything; you have big dreams; don't you think you're reaching a bit; try something more attainable; you were never good in math; you're not quick on your feet; you're oblivious to the world around you.

16. (intransitive) To extend in dimension, time etc.; to stretch out continuously (past, beyond, above, from etc. something).
    • 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Abacus 2010, page 4:

      The Thembu tribe reaches back for twenty generations to King Zwide.

17. (nautical) To sail on the wind, as from one point of tacking to another, or with the wind nearly abeam.
18. To experience a vomiting reflex; to gag; to retch.

Usage notes

• In the past, raught, rought and retcht could be found as past tense forms; these are now obsolete, except perhaps in some dialects.

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

reach (plural reaches)

1. The act of stretching or extending; extension.
2. The ability to reach or touch with the person, a limb, or something held or thrown.

   The fruit is beyond my reach.

   to be within reach of cannon shot

   • 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot Chapter VI

     […] and we have learned not to fire at any of the dinosaurs unless we can keep out of their reach for at least two minutes after hitting them in the brain or spine, or five minutes after puncturing their hearts—it takes them so long to die.

3. The power of stretching out or extending action, influence, or the like; power of attainment or management; extent of force or capacity.
   • 1630, John Hayward, The Life and Raigne of King Edward VI

     Drawn by others who had deeper reaches than themselves to matters which they least intended.
4. Extent; stretch; expanse; hence, application; influence; result; scope.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost

     And on the left hand, hell, / With long reach, interposed.

   • 1999, Evan J. Mandery, The Campaign: Rudy Giuliani, Ruth Messenger, Al Sharpton, and the Race to be Mayor of New York City

     While points measure the number of times the average person in a group sees an ad, reach measures the percentage of people in a group that see an ad at least once. Increasing the reach of an ad becomes increasingly expensive as you go along (for the mathematically inclined, it is an exponential function).

5. (informal) An exaggeration; an extension beyond evidence or normal; a stretch.

   To call George eloquent is certainly a reach.

6. (boxing) The distance a boxer's arm can extend to land a blow.
7. (nautical) Any point of sail in which the wind comes from the side of a vessel, excluding close-hauled.
8. (nautical) The distance traversed between tacks.
9. (nautical) A stretch of a watercourse which can be sailed in one reach (in the previous sense). An extended portion of water; a stretch; a straightish portion of a stream, river, or arm of the sea extending up into the land, as from one turn to another. By extension, the adjacent land.
   • December 2011, Dan Houston, Sailing a classic yacht on the Thames, Classic Boat Magazine

     Close-hauled past flats at Island Gardens opposite the old Royal Naval College at Greenwich we’d been making more than seven knots over the ground and we came close enough to touch the wall. It had felt like roller-blading – long lee-bowed boards down the reaches of this historic river. They have such great names: Bugsby’s Reach, Gallions [Reach], Fiddler’s [Reach] or the evocative Lower Hope [Reach].

   • The river's wooded reach.

   • the gulfe Iasius, and all the coast thereof is very full of creekes and reaches.

10. A level stretch of a watercourse, as between rapids in a river or locks in a canal. (examples?)
11. An extended portion or area of land or water.
    • 2002, Russell Allen, "Incantations of the Apprentice", on Symphony X, The Odyssey.

12. (obsolete) An article to obtain an advantage.
    • 1623, Francis Bacon, A Discourse of a War with Spain

      The Duke of Parma had particular reaches and ends of his own, under hand, to cross the design.

13. The pole or rod connecting the rear axle with the forward bolster of a wagon.
14. An effort to vomit; a retching.

Derived terms

reaches

Translations

Anagrams

• Arche, acher, arche, chare, chear, rache

Mòcheno

Etymology

From Middle High German r?ch, from Old High German r?h, from Proto-West Germanic *raih?, from Proto-Germanic *raihô, *raih? (“deer”). Cognate with German Reh, English roe.

Noun

reach n

1. roe deer

References

• “reach” in Cimbrian, Ladin, Mòcheno: Getting to know 3 peoples. 2015. Servizio minoranze linguistiche locali della Provincia autonoma di Trento, Trento, Italy.

West Frisian

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

reach n (plural reagen, diminutive reachje)

1. spiderweb

Further reading

• “reach”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011

English

Alternative forms

• powre (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English poer, from Old French poeir, from Vulgar Latin *pot?re, from Latin possum, posse (“to be able”); see potent. Compare Modern French pouvoir. Displaced native Old English anweald.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?pa??(?)/, /?pa?.?(?)/
  • (with triphthong smoothing) IPA^(key): /pa?/, /pa?/, /p??/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?pa?.?/, /?pa??/, [?p?a???], [?p?a???]
• Rhymes: -a?.?(?), -a??(?)
• Hyphenation: pow?er

Noun

power (countable and uncountable, plural powers)

1. Ability to do or undergo something.
   • 2018, Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (page 74)

     If it is spirits who have power to suffer, it seems they would also have active powers to think and will.

2. (social) Ability to coerce, influence or control.
   1. (countable) Ability to affect or influence.

      • An incident which happened about this time will set the characters of these two lads more fairly before the discerning reader than is in the power of the longest dissertation.

      • Thwackum, on the contrary, maintained that the human mind, since the fall, was nothing but a sink of iniquity, till purified and redeemed by grace. […] The favourite phrase of the former, was the natural beauty of virtue; that of the latter, was the divine power of grace.

      • 1998, Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

        Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present.

   2. Control or coercion, particularly legal or political (jurisdiction).
      • 1949, Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

        The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. [...] We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

      • 2005, Columbia Law Review, April

        In the face of expanding federal power, California in particular struggled to maintain control over its Chinese population.
   3. (metonymically, chiefly in the plural) The people in charge of legal or political power, the government.

      Synonym: powers that be

   4. (metonymically) An influential nation, company, or other such body.
3. (physical, uncountable) Effectiveness.
   1. Physical force or strength.

   2. Electricity or a supply of electricity.
   3. A measure of the rate of doing work or transferring energy.
   4. The strength by which a lens or mirror magnifies an optical image.

4. (colloquial, dated) A large amount or number.

   • The threatning words of duke Robert comming at the last to king Henries eares, caused him foorthwith to conceiue verie sore displeasure against a power of men sent into Normandie.
5. Any of the elementary forms or parts of machines: three primary (the lever, inclined plane, and pulley) and three secondary (the wheel-and-axle, wedge, and screw).

   the mechanical powers

6. (physics, mechanics) A measure of the effectiveness that a force producing a physical effect has over time. If linear, the quotient of: (force multiplied by the displacement of or in an object) ÷ time. If rotational, the quotient of: (force multiplied by the angle of displacement) ÷ time.
7. (mathematics)
   1. A product of equal factors (and generalizations of this notion): ${\displaystyle x^{n}}$, read as "${\displaystyle x}$ to the power of ${\displaystyle n}$" or the like, is called a power and denotes the product ${\displaystyle x\times x\times \cdots \times x}$, where ${\displaystyle x}$ appears ${\displaystyle n}$ times in the product; ${\displaystyle x}$ is called the base and ${\displaystyle n}$ the exponent.
   2. (set theory) Cardinality.
   3. (statistics) The probability that a statistical test will reject the null hypothesis when the alternative hypothesis is true.
8. (biblical, in the plural) In Christian angelology, an intermediate level of angels, ranked above archangels, but exact position varies by classification scheme.

Usage notes

• Adjectives often used with "power": electric, nuclear, optical, mechanical, political, absolute, corporate, institutional, military, economic, solar, magic, magical, huge, physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, sexual, seductive, coercive, erotic, natural, cultural, positive, negative, etc.

Synonyms

Antonyms

• impotence
• weakness

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• ? German: Power
• ? Welsh: p?er

Translations

Verb

power (third-person singular simple present powers, present participle powering, simple past and past participle powered)

1. (transitive) To provide power for (a mechanical or electronic device).

   This CD player is powered by batteries.

2. (transitive) To hit or kick something forcefully.
3. To enable or provide the impetus for.

Derived terms

• power down
• power up
• empower

Translations

Adjective

power (comparative more power, superlative most power)

1. (Singapore, colloquial) Impressive.

Further reading

• power at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• powre

German

Etymology 1

From French pauvre, from Latin pauper.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?po?v?r/, [?po?v?]
• Hyphenation: po?wer

Adjective

power (comparative powerer, superlative am powersten)

1. (regional, informal) poor, miserable

Declension

Etymology 2

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?pa???r/, [?pa???]
• Homophone: Power

Verb

power

1. singular imperative of powern
2. (colloquial) first-person singular present of powern

Further reading

• “power” in Duden online