  We determine the strange quark condensate from lattice QCD for the first time
and compare its value to that of the light quark and chiral condensates. The
results come from a direct calculation of the expectation value of the trace of
the quark propagator followed by subtraction of the appropriate perturbative
contribution, derived here, to convert the non-normal-ordered $m\bar{\psi}\psi$
to the $\bar{MS}$ scheme at a fixed scale. This is then a well-defined physical
`nonperturbative' condensate that can be used in the Operator Product Expansion
of current-current correlators. The perturbative subtraction is calculated
through $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s)$ and estimates of higher order terms are
included through fitting results at multiple lattice spacing values. The gluon
field configurations used are `second generation' ensembles from the MILC
collaboration that include 2+1+1 flavors of sea quarks implemented with the
Highly Improved Staggered Quark action and including $u/d$ sea quarks down to
physical masses. Our results are : $<\bar{s}{s}>^{\bar{MS}}(2 \mathrm{GeV})=
-(290(15) \mathrm{MeV})^3$, $<\bar{l}{l}>^{\bar{MS}}(2\, \mathrm{GeV})=
-(283(2) \mathrm{MeV})^3$, where $l$ is a light quark with mass equal to the
average of the $u$ and $d$ quarks. The strange to light quark condensate ratio
is 1.08(16). The light quark condensate is significantly larger than the chiral
condensate in line with expectations from chiral analyses. We discuss the
implications of these results for other calculations.
