strengths

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of strength.

   Her greatest strengths are patience and clear thinking under pressure.

   A good leader builds on the team's strengths rather than dwelling on its faults.

   Note

   Only the countable uses of strength take this plural. A person's strengths are separate positive qualities, and a team's strengths are the points it can rely on. The mass sense, the bare quality of being strong, normally stays singular: great strength, not great strengths. Older English also counted bodies of troops and strongholds as strengths, but both of those uses are now obsolete.

2. 2
   verbobsolete

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of strength. Obsolete.

   Note

   An obsolete verb form. Strength was once a verb meaning what strengthen means now, in all of its senses. As the -s form of that verb, it belongs to older writing. In modern prose, exercise strengthens the muscles, and a reader meeting strengths will take it as the plural noun. If you want the modern verb, use strengthens.

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