stress
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English
Etymology
From a shortening of Middle English destresse, borrowed from Old French destrecier, from Latin distringō (“to stretch out”). This form probably coalesced with Middle English stresse, from Old French estrece (“narrowness”), from Vulgar Latin *strictia, from Latin strictus (“narrow”).
In the sense of "mental strain" or “disruption”, used occasionally in the 1920s and 1930s by psychologists, including Walter Cannon (1934); in “biological threat”, used by endocrinologist Hans Selye, by metaphor with stress in physics (force on an object) in the 1930s, and popularized by same in the 1950s.
Pronunciation
Noun
stress (countable and uncountable, plural stresses)
- (biology) A physical, chemical, infective agent aggressing an organism.
- (biology) Aggression toward an organism resulting in a response in an attempt to restore previous conditions.
- (countable, physics) The internal distribution of force across a small boundary per unit area of that boundary (pressure) within a body. It causes strain or deformation and is typically symbolised by σ or τ.
- (countable, physics) Force externally applied to a body which cause internal stress within the body.
- (uncountable) Emotional pressure suffered by a human being or other animal.
- Go easy on him, he's been under a lot of stress lately.
- (countable, phonetics, loosely) A suprasegmental feature of a language having additional attention raised to a sound, word or word group by means of of loudness, duration or pitch; phonological prominence.
- Synonym: accent
- Some people put the stress on the first syllable of “controversy”; others put it on the second.
- (countable, phonetics, strictly) The suprasegmental feature of a language having additional attention raised to a sound by means of of loudness and/or duration; phonological prominence phonetically achieved by means of dynamics as distinct from pitch.
- Synonym: stress accent
- Antonyms: pitch, pitch accent
- 2020 July 9, Steve Rapaport, “Parallel syncretism in early Indo-European”, in Bridget Drinka, editor, Historical Linguistics 2017: Selected Papers from the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, San Antonio, Texas, 31 July – 4 August 2017, , page 59:
- The shift from pitch to stress appears to happen before the other obliques begin merging in the Proto-Italic, Proto-Germanic, Primitive Irish, and Middle Indo-Aryan. But further investigation into the timeline of sound changes […] shows that, at least in Germanic, the oblique and core noun stems sound quite unpredictably different in all these families by the time of the crucial accent shift from pitch to stress. […] once a language becomes stress-sensitive, there seems to be a strong tendency in early Indo-European languages to shift the stress to the first syllable. This change happens shortly after the change to stress accent in Proto-Germanic, Proto-Italic, and Proto-Celtic, and even Thessalian, with evidence from Dybo's Law and Verner's Law left behind to show that sound changes happened after the changes to stress accent.
- (uncountable) Emphasis placed on a particular point in an argument or discussion (whether spoken or written).
- Obsolete form of distress.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- With this sad Hersal of his heavy stress,
The warlike Damzel was empassion's sore,
And said; Sir Knight, your Cause is nothing less
Than is your Sorrow , certes if not more
- (Scots law) distress; the act of distraining; also, the thing distrained.
Synonyms
Derived terms
- anti-stress
- combat stress reaction
- complex post-traumatic stress disorder
- critical incident stress management
- engineering stress
- eu-stress
- genotoxic stress
- internal stress
- nitrosative stress
- oxidative stress
- Peierls stress
- post traumatic stress disorder
- post-traumatic stress disorder
- posttraumatic stress disorder
- premenstrual stress
- primary stress
- residual stress
- secondary stress
- shear stress
- storm and stress
- stress ball
- stress deafness
- stress fracture
- stress-free, stressfree
- stressful
- stress function
- stress incontinence
- stress mark
- stress of weather
- stress puppy
- stress test
- stress-timed
- stresswise
- stress wood
- true stress
- yield stress
Translations
(physics) internal force across a boundary per area
|
emotional pressure
|
on a phonological segment — see accent
on a point in an argument
|
Verb
stress (third-person singular simple present stresses, present participle stressing, simple past and past participle stressed)
- (transitive) To apply force to (a body or structure) causing strain.
- (transitive) To apply emotional pressure to (a person or animal).
- (intransitive, informal) To suffer stress; to worry or be agitated.
- (transitive) To emphasise (a syllable of a word).
- “Emphasis” is stressed on the first syllable, but “emphatic” is stressed on the second.
- (transitive) To emphasise (words in speaking).
- (transitive) To emphasise (a point) in an argument or discussion.
- I must stress that this information is given in strict confidence.
Synonyms
- (phonetics): emphasise/emphasize
- (on words in speaking): emphasise/emphasize
- (on a point): emphasise/emphasize, underline
Derived terms
Translations
to apply force to, causing strain
|
to apply emotional pressure to
|
to emphasise (a syllable)
|
to emphasise (words in speaking)
|
to emphasise (a point)
|
References
- ^ Keil, R.M.K. (2004) Coping and stress: a conceptual analysis Journal of Advanced Nursing, 45(6), 659–665
Related terms
Danish
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
stress c or n (singular definite stressen or stresset, not used in plural)
Derived terms
Dutch
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
stress m (uncountable)
Derived terms
French
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
stress m (uncountable)
- stress (emotional pressure)
Derived terms
Further reading
- “stress”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.
Icelandic
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
stress n (genitive singular stress, no plural)
Declension
declension of stress
Related terms
Indonesian
Noun
stress (first-person possessive stressku, second-person possessive stressmu, third-person possessive stressnya)
- Nonstandard spelling of stres.
Adjective
stress
- Nonstandard spelling of stres.
Italian
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
stress m (invariable)
Norwegian Bokmål
Etymology
Verb
stress
Portuguese
Pronunciation
- Hyphenation: stress
Noun
stress m (plural stresses)
Spanish
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from English stress.
Pronunciation
Noun
stress m (plural stresses)
Usage notes
According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.
Swedish
Etymology
Borrowed from English stress. First attested in the 1950s.
Noun
stress c (uncountable)
Declension
| Declension of stress | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uncountable | ||||
| Indefinite | Definite | |||
| Nominative | stress | stressen | — | — |
| Genitive | stress | stressens | — | — |