# strength

Pronunciation: US say "STRENGKTH" /stɹɛŋkθ/; UK say "STRENGTH" /stɹɛŋ(k)θ/

## Noun

1. The quality or degree of being strong, whether in body, character, or material.
   - Simple: How strong a person or thing is, in body, mind, or material.
   - _After months of recovery, his strength slowly returned._
   - _Engineers tested the bridge for the strength of its steel cables._
2. The intensity of a force, power, or effect; its potency.
   - Simple: How strong or powerful a force, feeling, or substance is.
   - _Chemists checked the strength of the acid before the experiment began._
   - _The strength of the signal dropped as we drove into the mountains._
3. A good or valuable quality or part that a person or thing has; the strongest feature of something, or a person or thing that gives support and can be relied on.
   - Simple: A good quality or the best part of someone or something, or someone who gives you support.
   - _Her main strength is staying calm under pressure._
   - _The team's strengths lie in creativity and quick thinking._
4. The size of a group, team, army or workforce counted in people, particularly the complete number required.
   - Simple: How many people a team, army or group has, often all the people it needs.
   - _With three nurses out sick, the ward is running well below strength._
   - _By spring the regiment had a strength of about eight hundred men._

## Noun

5. A military force, or an organized body of soldiers. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: An army or large group of soldiers.
6. A strongly defended place; a stronghold. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A safe, strongly built place, such as a fort.

## Verb

7. To make something or someone stronger; to reinforce. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To make a person or thing stronger.

## Other meanings

- (noun) The smallest ratio, over all ways of cutting a graph, of edges removed to the number of extra components the cut produces.

## Origin

From Middle English strengthe, from Old English strengþu ("strength"), going back to Proto-West Germanic *strangiþu. It is essentially "strong" plus "-th", an ending that forms abstract nouns, and is related to Dutch strengte ("strength").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/strength (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).