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Can "strong" be used as a noun?

In this question there is a situation that the word "strong" seems to be ungrammatical or even nonsense. But because the source is a clip, not a text, therefore some comments and answers speculate that the intended word is not "strong" but could be something else. However, I don't think that the case:

It is clear that the caster starts the word with /s/, a fricative unvoiced sound, not /d/, a plosive voiced one. In the transcript it is also identified as "strong".

Should I add this to the question, when it would make those answers wrong, or at least must be changed to fit?

2 Answers 2

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I think when people can listen to the source for themselves it is not appropriate. When I listen to the clip of the game I hear “gearing up for a huge storm”, and I think that is correct based on what they were talking about prior to the spot you linked.

It’s understandable that you believe it is “strong” based on the sound quality and transcript, but I think biasing your question strongly toward your interpretation may send people down the wrong path and prevent you from getting a correct answer.

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    Yes, prior to the time in question, they are talking about brute-force attacks. At 38:18 (and if you look at the closed captioning there), what is "comes town to fantastic sized storms he might..." It makes perfect sense that they continue to talk about storms.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Feb 3, 2019 at 4:56
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Back when you wrote the question, it would have been worth mentioning how your written version of what's said in the video was taken verbatim from the transcript. It might have been nice to include more of the transcript, too.

That said, even the transcript doesn't really prove anything. Many YouTube transcripts are rife with errors. Moreover, commentators sometimes misspeak and use a wrong word, or break off mid-sentence and omit a word.

In short, the fact that the sentence you wrote matches the transcript is worth mentioning, but I wouldn't argue dogmatically against those who "speculate that the intended word is not 'strong' but could be something else."

Incidentally, I've never heard the word strong used in that way. It could be gamer slang, or perhaps the speaker meant to say, "...a huge, strong attack," but got distracted by the action and left off the last word.

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  • I think it's on borderline. For example, I don't think the caster got distracted, because if they are distracted in this case, then probably they will be in almost any case. If a large portion of the answers conclude that, then I should add this to the question, right?
    – Ooker
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 4:05
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    @Ooker why would you add assumptions from the answers into your question? What would you hope to accomplish?
    – ColleenV
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 11:04
  • It's just a part of trying to be as specific as possible, as how the How do I ask a good question? suggests
    – Ooker
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 12:03
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    @Ooker Your question isn’t about what these two guys actually said in the clip. I think continuing to focus on this one example is making your question less useful.
    – ColleenV
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 14:49
  • I agree. On the other hand, both answers in here only deal with that specific question. I would like to have a more general one.
    – Ooker
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 17:10
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    @Ooker If you’re asking for a general statement on whether you should edit a question to invalidate some answers by stating that you don’t want answers that deviate from some assumption, no, don’t do that. If the voice clip is detracting, find another example and add it to your question and explain why you added it. You should be able to refine your question without completely invalidating answers. You might leave a comment below the answers to let people know that your question has been refined so they can update their answers if they want to.
    – ColleenV
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 20:18

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