stress

plural stresses

1. countableuncountablebiologyA physical, chemical, infective agent aggressing an organism.
2. countableuncountablebiologyAggression toward an organism resulting in a response in an attempt to restore previous conditions.
3. countablenatural sciencesThe 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.
4. countablenatural sciencesForce externally applied to a body which cause internal stress within the body.
5. uncountableEmotional pressure suffered by a human being or other animal.

   Go easy on him, he's been under a lot of stress lately.

   1 more example

   Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional model of stress and coping describes psychological stress as “a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p.19). According to these authors, the essence of inducing stress is how a person appraises the situation and whether he or she has the physical and mental ability to cope with the problem.

   2024 December 16, Amanda M. Y. Chu, Damen H. Y. Woo, Agnes Tiwari, Helina Yuk, Mike K. P. So, “Which types of family caregivers are more prone to developing depression? Leveraging non-financial social support to mitigate depression”, in Current Psychology, →DOI

6. broadlycountablehuman sciencesA 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.

   lexical stress

   2 more examples

   phrase stress, prosodic stress

   Some people put the stress on the first syllable of “controversy”; others put it on the second.

   Synonyms: emphasis, accent

7. countablestrictlyhuman sciencesThe suprasegmental feature of a language having additional attention raised to a sound by means of loudness and/or duration; phonological prominence phonetically achieved by means of dynamics as distinct from pitch.

   1 more example

   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.

   2020 September 7, 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, →DOI, page 59

   Synonyms: stress accent · Antonyms: pitch, pitch accent

8. uncountableEmphasis placed on a particular point in an argument or discussion (whether spoken or written).

   Synonyms: emphasis

9. countableobsoleteuncountableObsolete form of distress.

   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

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

10. countableuncountableScots lawdistress; the act of distraining; also, the thing distrained.

present singular third person stresses · participle present stressing · participle past stressed · past stressed

1. transitiveTo apply force to (a body or structure) causing strain.
2. transitiveTo apply emotional pressure to (a person or animal).
3. informalintransitiveTo suffer stress; to worry or be agitated.
4. transitiveTo emphasise (a syllable of a word).

   “Emphasis” is stressed on the first syllable, but “emphatic” is stressed on the second.

5. transitiveTo emphasise (words in speaking).

   Synonyms: emphasise, emphasize

6. transitiveTo emphasise (a point) in an argument or discussion.

   I must stress that this information is given in strict confidence.

   Synonyms: emphasise, emphasize, underline