Potential can be either good or bad. Studying hard increases the potential for success, but wet roads increase the potential for accidents. But when a person or thing "has potential", we always expect something good from it in the future.

Understanding the Context

POTENTIAL definition: possible, as opposed to actual. See examples of potential used in a sentence. POTENTIAL meaning: 1. possible when the necessary conditions exist: 2.

Key Insights

someone's or something's ability to develop…. Learn more. If you say that someone or something has potential for doing a particular thing, you mean that it is possible they may do it. If there is the potential for something, it may happen. The possibility that something might happen or result from given conditions: a tense situation with the potential to turn into a riot; farming practices that increase the potential for the erosion of topsoil.

Final Thoughts

In physics, a potential may refer to the scalar potential or to the vector potential. In either case, it is a field defined in space, from which many important physical properties may be derived. potential (countable and uncountable, plural potentials) Even from a young age it was clear that she had the potential to become a great musician. Comrades, our own fleet doesn't know our full potential. They will do everything possible to test us, but they will only test their own embarrassment. In physics, existing in a positional form, not as motion: especially in the phrase potential energy.

In grammar, expressing power or possibility: as, the potential mode; potential forms. See phrase under participle noun Anything that may be possible; a possibility. Potential definition: Capable of being but not yet in existence; latent or undeveloped.