strength
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
8 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "strength", 8-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "strength" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "strength" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
strength is aEnglishnoun. It means: The quality or degree of being strong. Pronounced /stɹɛŋ(k)θ/. It ranks #1,677 in English word frequency. Often confused with strengths and strengthen.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | strength |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /stɹɛŋ(k)θ/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #1,677 |
| Misspellings tracked | 14 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for strength is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /stɹɛŋ(k)θ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,677 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 14 documented wrong-spelling variants for strength, with forms such as "srtength", "sstrength", and "sterngth". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 2 confusable-pair relationships, "strengths", "strengthen", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English strengthe, from Old English strengþu (“strength”), from Proto-West Germanic *strangiþu (“strongness; strength”), equivalent to strong + -th (abstract nominal suffix). Cognate with Dutch strengte (“strength”), German Low German Strengde, … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is strength, spelled S-T-R-E-N-G-T-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The quality or degree of being strong.
- 2The intensity of a force or power; potency.
- 3The strongest part of something; that on which confidence or reliance is based.
- 4A positive attribute.
- 5An armed force, a body of troops.
- 6A strong place; a stronghold.
- 7The minimum ratio of the number of edges removed from a given graph to components created, over all possible removals.
Etymology
From Middle English strengthe, from Old English strengþu (“strength”), from Proto-West Germanic *strangiþu (“strongness; strength”), equivalent to strong + -th (abstract nominal suffix). Cognate with Dutch strengte (“strength”), German Low German Strengde, Strengte (“harshness; rigidity; strictness; severity”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: srtength,sstrength,sterngth,stregnth,strenggth,strenght,strengthh,strengtth,strenngth,strentgh,strnegth,strrength,sttrength,tsrength
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for strength
Misspelling Variants of "strength"
Frequency rank: #1,677 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: