<p>Some philosophers claim that properties like sphericity and electric charge are powers. This is usually cashed out as a grounding or explanatory claim:&#xa0;properties are powers to the extent that they ground certain dispositions. But how is this explanation supposed to pan out? This paper presents a two-horned dilemma against the claim that properties are powers, based on a crucial distinction: whether these properties have a dispositional nature or not. In the former case we encounter dispositional essentialism, in the latter the so-called grounding theories of powers. Whereas dispositional essentialism suffers from insurmountable explanatory circularities, grounding theories of powers find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. By exploiting a recent distinction between transparent and opaque grounding, I argue that the grounding explanations usually provided either struggle with residual dispositionality, or simply do not provide enough information for any explanation to go through; a recent appeal to an abductive methodology in metaphysics vis-à-vis opaque grounding claims is shown to be ineffective in this context. Long story short: properties are not powers.</p>