Other forms: stronger, strongest
Strong means having great physical power, or being hard to break, or having a powerful effect. A strong man, a strong rope, strong coffee, a strong smell.
It stretches a long way and the collocations are worth collecting because they do not translate: strong tea, strong wind, a strong accent, strong feelings, a strong argument, a strong currency. In each the word means something slightly different and in none of them would powerful or hard substitute cleanly. The comparative is regular — stronger, strongest — and the noun is strength, which changes both spelling and sound and is one of the harder English nouns to say.
1adjectivestrongHaving great physical power.~2%
“You need to be strong to carry that up two flights.”
2adjectiveeasilyNot easily broken or damaged.~6%
“The bag looks flimsy and is surprisingly strong.”
3adjectivepowerfulHaving a powerful taste, smell or effect.~20%
“The coffee here is very strong.”
4adjectivefirmlyFirmly held or well supported.~72%
“She has strong views about it and says so.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
strong is a quality of power.
Old English strang meant severe and tight before it meant powerful, and the same root gives string, strangle and stringent — all of them ideas about something drawn taut. Strength is what a rope has when it is pulled and does not give.
Proto-Indo-European
*strengʰ- — taut, stiff, tight
Proto-Germanic
*strangaz — tight, strict, straight, strong
Proto-West Germanic
*strang — severe, strict, rigorous, strong
Old English
strang — strong
Middle English
strong
English, today
strong
From Middle English strong, strang, from Old English strang (“strong”), from Proto-West Germanic strang (“severe, strict, rigorous, strong”), from Proto-Germanic strangaz (“tight, strict, straight, strong”), from Proto-Indo-European strengʰ- (“taut, stiff, tight”). Cognate with Scots strang (“strong”), West Frisian strang, string (“strict, harsh, severe, stern, stark, tough, strong, intense”), Dutch streng (“strict, severe, tight”), dialectal Dutch strang (“tight, strict, powerful, intense, mighty, strong”), German streng (“strict, severe, austere”), Danish - and Norwegian streng (“strong, hard”), Norwegian strang (“strong, harsh, bitter”), Swedish sträng, strang (“severe, strict, harsh”), Faroese - and Icelandic strangur (“strict”), Latin stringō (“tighten”). Related to a doublet of strict and string. The grammar sense is a German stark. (?)
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA