What is the meaning of strength and its etymology?

Answer 1

According to Wikipedia, physical strength in humans and animals is defined as the ability to exert force on physical objects using muscles. Physical strength is determined by two factors: the cross sectional area of the muscle fibers recruited to exert the force and the intensity of the recruitment. Another type of strength is material strength and is defined as the ability of a material to withstand an applied stress without failure. The applied stress is the force ( e.g., pushing on the end of a wrench to loosen a nut or bolt ) divided by the geometric area on which the force is applied, e.g. the cross sectional area of a wrench which can be assumed to be rectangular in shape where the area is length x width. According to Word-Origins.com, the word strength comes from prehistoric Germanic "stranggitho" which itself comes from the word strong. Strong also comes from prehistoric Germanic "stranggaz". Its immediate related words died out exept the current German word "streng" which means "severe". It went back to a base word that denoted stiffness and tautness which produced the English word "string".