The Potent Generator

A Linguistic Invention by Jon Aquino

Inspired by "Turning Adjectives into Nouns" · jona.ca · July 2011

"I would like to propose that if you need a new word for something, an option available to you is to take an adjective and turn it into a noun. Chances are that no-one will have done it before, so you will have your new noun. And it will have the advantage of sounding esoteric." — Jon Aquino, 2011
Potent of the Day

Potentify Your Own Adjective

Enter any adjective and forge your own potent — a noun the dictionary has never seen.

The Emerging Lexicon of Potents

Jon's Top Potent Suffixes

According to Jon's research, these endings make the strongest potents — that "technical, hard-to-understand vibe":

-ic → referentic -al → relational -ent → different -ive → transitive -ory → preparatory -ous → vicarious -ary → elementary

Quiz: Guess the Original Adjective

A potent is shown — can you identify which adjective it was forged from?