pressure cooker

plural pressure cookers · alternative pressure-cooker

1. cookingA sealed cooking vessel that allows cooking in greater than atmospheric pressure and at a temperature above the boiling point of water.
2. figurativelyA stressful situation that is liable to erupt.

   Wall Street hopes that economic deprivation will turn up the pressure cooker on internal relations.

   2007 July 19, Leslie Feinberg, “Cuba education about same-sex love reached every home”, in Workers World

   3 more examples

   Look, I had a pressure cooker of a job along with more responsibility that any one person should have. I had an office of twenty-five people under me all needing help like little birds in a nest.

   2006, J. P. Cardone, Tales Under a Full Moon, page 208

   Humanity lives in a pressure cooker of stress because of the ruthless way in which we compete, because of our lack of respect for the international rules of commerce, because of social conflicts, because of the devastation to the environment.

   2011, Augusto Cury, The Dreamseller: The Calling, page 173

   And in the last few months, the city’s average apartment rent surpassed New York City’s to be the nation’s most expensive, reaching $3,827 a month, according to the real estate data firm CoStar. “It’s a pressure cooker, and it’s heated up really fast,” said Nigel Hughes, a senior researcher at CoStar.

   2026 June 29, Emmy Martin, “In San Francisco, Even $180,000 Tech Salaries Are No Longer Enough”, in The New York Times, →ISSN