Complex Numbers

Strength

Time for another entry for "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]:

Strength

Interesting word, strength. You don't get too many clusters of four consonants in English; twelfth and angst provide two other examples. Extend them to plurals and you can get five consonants in a row. Together with the three-consonant initial cluster in "strength," you get a strange word indeed: seven consonants with one vowel. There's apparently an archaic word, strengthed, which holds the record, but no one uses that anymore. Apparently we started using "strengthened" instead, giving it two syllables.

Some say that the word "rhythm" is the longest consonant cluster in English, but as the "y" acts as a vowel there, I disagree. I'd also argue that the "-thm" cluster there contains a hidden schwa.

We use these words often enough that their oddities barely register.

As for the concept of strength itself, well, you could say the word does some heavy lifting. That is, you could say it if you wanted people to yeet tomatoes at you. In its most common usage, it refers to a person's physical power, as in how much weight you can curl or press or whatever. It can also refer to mental fortitude, though; and it's not always about muscular or mental power, but often it refers to the amount of stress an inanimate object can take before it snaps.

The dictionary definitions of strength generally mention that it's "the quality of being strong" or some such. Which, to me, illustrates one of the problems with dictionaries; you have to also look up "strong."

Any language (as opposed to translation) dictionary is entirely recursive. What does recursive mean? Let's check the Waltz Dictionary:

Recursive (adj.) see recursive

It takes a great deal of mental strength to deal with English. It's no wonder so many of us resort to glossolalia.