PMS
- 1Initialism of premenstrual syndrome or premenstrual stress.
Her PMS leaves her exhausted for several days each cycle.
Many people manage PMS with exercise, sleep, and dietary changes.
Note
A clinical label that everyday speech has taken over. The British Social Biology Council in 1980 discussed recognizing PMS as a clinical entity, while in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy (1997) a character introduces someone as "this pile of PMS", turning the term into a jibe. In this use it is uncountable, PMT is its synonym, and the informal verb to be PMSing grows from it.
- 2To go through the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome or premenstrual stress in the days before menstruation.
She warned her coworkers she might be PMSing during the busy week.
Plenty of people PMS without realizing how much it affects their sleep.
Note
Here the noun has become a verb. It inflects as PMSes, PMSing and PMSed, and the capitals stay in every form. The past participle can serve as an adjective: in Henry Roi's With Her Fists (2019) a character says she is "feeling a little PMSed". The verb belongs to casual talk; in careful or clinical writing, the noun is the safer choice.
- 3Plural of PM.
The moderators answer dozens of PMs every day.
He ignored all the PMs in his inbox until Monday.
Note
Written in full capitals, the plural of PM lands on the same letters as every other meaning here, whether the PMs are prime ministers, post mortems or private messages. Writing PMs, with a lowercase s and no apostrophe, keeps the plural from being read as an initialism of its own.
- 4Third-person singular simple present indicative of PM.
The bot automatically PMs new members a welcome note.
Whenever a deal goes live, she PMs her closest friends first.
Note
Two verbs share this form: to project manage and, online, to send a private message. The messaging verb is transitive and takes the person as its object, as in she PMs her friends. The lowercase-s spelling that clarifies the plural serves this verb form just as well.
- 5Initialism of Pantone Matching System.
The style guide locks every logo color to a specific PMS value.
She cross-checked the proof against the PMS before approving the run.
Note
A brand name standing in for a whole set of colors. Because the system is proprietary, the full form keeps its capitals: Pantone Matching System. A color specified this way points to one company's set of designations, not to a general color name.
- 6Initialism of package management system.
A good PMS resolves software dependencies automatically.
The team standardized on a single PMS across all their servers.
Note
Software shorthand for a package manager, the tool an operating system uses to install and manage software. Unlike the medical abbreviation, this one is countable: a server runs one PMS, and a comparison can weigh several PMSs. Context, usually a nearby mention of software or servers, keeps the two from colliding.
- 7Initialism of project management system.
Switching to a cloud-based PMS cut the team's reporting time in half.
Every milestone and budget line lives in the company's PMS.
Note
This began as a product name. In 1971 Boyd C. Paulson describes PMS (Project Management System) as a comprehensive system marketed by IBM that included resource allocation. By 2006 Petter Gottschalk lists project management system alongside EIS, CRM and ERP as a generic kind of IS/IT solution. The lowercase spelling of the full phrase marks its shift from brand to category.
- 8Initialism of performance management system.
The company rolled out a PMS to align individual goals with team targets.
Annual appraisals are logged and rated within the PMS.
- 9Initialism of performance measurement system.
The PMS aggregates output data from every production line into one dashboard.
Executives rely on the PMS to compare results across regions.
Note
Three business phrases collapse into these same letters: this one, performance management and performance monitoring. Because the letters cannot tell them apart, writers spell the phrase out first and put the letters in parentheses. The 1972 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on parole legislation do exactly this, and the term later turns up in N. Stolbe and B. List's 2006 work on data warehouses.
- 10Initialism of performance monitoring system.
The PMS flags any server whose response time climbs above the threshold.
Engineers tune their alerts so the PMS doesn't bury them in false alarms.
Note
In development policy, the system watches programs rather than servers. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation's 2006 survey on harmonization and alignment describes a PMS with formal elements for monitoring poverty reduction in relation to the PARPA. The same letters therefore cover both technical alerting and the review of public programs, and the surrounding text decides which is meant.
Less common meanings
- 11Initialism of planned maintenance system.
The engine room logs each service interval in the vessel's PMS.
A well-kept PMS records when every component was last inspected.
Note
Military maintenance shows the term's character. A 1966 Senate Armed Services hearing describes a planned maintenance system for surface missile ships, meant to raise readiness by cutting downtime. The letters work well as a modifier, as in "the PMS requirements applicable to that compressor". Used this way, they name the schedule a technician must follow, not just the record that holds it.
- 12Initialism of Phelan-McDermid syndrome.
A genetic test confirmed PMS as the cause of the child's delayed speech.
Families affected by PMS often coordinate care across neurology and therapy teams.
Note
A second medical PMS, and one easily confused with the premenstrual sense. This one is a genetic disorder marked by developmental delay, intellectual disability, speech abnormalities, ASD-like behaviors and hypotonia. In clinical writing, spelling out the full name at first mention avoids the clash.
- 13Initialism of pre-main sequence.
Astronomers catalogued dozens of PMS stars in the young cluster.
A PMS object shines from gravitational contraction rather than steady hydrogen fusion.
Note
Astronomers use it of stars, as in a PMS star or a PMS object, for a young star that has not yet reached the main sequence. It is not comparable: a star is either pre-main sequence or it is not, and nothing is "more PMS" than another.
Showing meanings only.
PMS is a form of PM
- Forms
- PMPMs plural
- Spelling
- PM → PMS: add -s
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