Stress Was an Engineering Term Before It Was a Feeling
Stress is pressure or strain. Hans Selye borrowed the word from physics in the 1930s to describe what pressure does to the body.
Stress is pressure, strain, or the emphasis given to a syllable. The psychological sense was deliberately borrowed: the physiologist Hans Selye took *stress* from engineering in the 1930s, where it described the force acting on a material, and applied it to what sustained pressure does to a body. He later said he regretted the choice, since his English was imperfect and *strain* would have been more accurate.
- Mental or physical pressure. *Under a lot of stress.*
- Emphasis on a syllable. *The stress falls on the second syllable.*
- Force on a material. *Stress fractures.*
- To emphasise. *He stressed the deadline.*
- Stressed out — overwhelmed. *Completely stressed out.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | stress | Work stress. |
| Verb | stress | Stress the point. |
| Adjective | stressful | A stressful week. |
| Adjective | stressed | Feeling stressed. |
| Related | distress | In distress. |
- The bridge failed under stress.Engineering, the original.
- Chronic stress affects sleep.Health.
- In record, the noun and verb stress different syllables.Phonetics.
Stress in English words
- English is stress-timed — stressed syllables come at roughly even intervals
- Noun and verb pairs shift — REcord and reCORD, PREsent and preSENT
- Compound nouns stress the first part — a BLACKbird, but a black BIRD
- Stress can change meaning entirely, which surprises learners
- Dictionaries mark it with a raised mark before the stressed syllable
A shortening of *distress*, from Old French, ultimately from Latin *stringere*, to draw tight. The physical sense is from the 1400s, the physiological one from the 1930s.
Who first used stress to mean psychological pressure?
Hans Selye, from the 1930s onwards. He borrowed the term from physics and later said strain would have been the better word.
Is stress the same as anxiety?
No. Stress is a response to a demand or pressure; anxiety can persist without any external demand.