"terrible power" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to a force which is capable of causing immense destruction or suffering, for instance: "The terrible power of the tsunami devastated the entire village."
But the idea that language has a terrible power over the brain, and can be easily manipulated by the powerful, is in no way limited to a lunatic fringe.Those who have written about it range from Orwell through many a postmodern theorist to George Lakoff, the Berkeley-based linguist who argues that Republicans repeatedly triumph by "out-framing" Democrats.
And on quite another level, his illustrations for "Wuthering Heights," though incomplete, have a terrible power.
It doesn't ignite a cataclysm, and that gives it its terrible power.
They sold their house in 1977, their cherished sense of place swept aside by the terrible power of race.
ALBA pledged to fight poverty and the "humiliation" of those ruled "by the terrible power structure of Anglo-Saxons".
Our anxiety about nuclear radiation is rooted in our understandable fear of the terrible power of nuclear weapons.
They had created a terrible power, but one that nations have successfully controlled for more than 50 years.
Their unremarkable authenticity gives these images a terrible power because they show how ordinary evil can be.
The most terrible power the state can wield is to take children away from their parents for ever.
They say that those painted by him sensed an almost terrible power, a drawing near to the brink of absolute veracity.
There was a terrible power "contained within these wrinkles in time".The novel's end vividly marks the birth of a British colony that grew to be extraordinary.
