The word is derived from the Latin impotentia (lit: lack of power). In 1420 the word was used in a poem "De regimine Principum" by Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1370-1454) to mean "want of strength" or "helplessness", "Hir impotence, Strecchith naght so fer as his influence". In another poem, "La male regle", of the same period, the word is used in the sense of "want of physical power or feebleness": "As I said, reeve on impotence that likely am to serve yit or eeue". But the use of the word to mean loss of sexual power first occurred in 1655 in Church History of Britain by Thomas Fuller (1608-61): "Whilest Papists crie up this, his incredible Incontinency: others uneasily unwonder the same by imputing it partly to Impotence afflicted, by an infirmitie."