stimulus
Pluralstimuluses, stimuli
- 1An outside thing or event that influences a system by triggering or changing something within it, such as a spur that drives someone to act.
Falling prices provided the stimulus consumers needed to start spending again.
For many artists, harsh criticism becomes a powerful stimulus rather than a setback.
Similarspur, incentive, impetus, boost, catalyst
Oppositedeterrent, disincentive, discouragement
Note
The figurative spur still carries its Latin picture: stimulus meant a goad or prick, and English applies it to whatever pushes a person, a market or a system into action. In politics it can stand alone. Matt Bai writes in 2012 of opposition "beginning with the stimulus," meaning one particular economic measure. The word keeps two plurals: the Latin stimuli and the English stimuluses.
- 2An external thing that brings about or influences a physical or mental response, or that affects one of the senses.
Researchers measured how quickly subjects reacted to a visual stimulus.
The nerve fires only when the stimulus reaches a certain strength.
Note
In the laboratory and the clinic, stimuli are usually sorted by the sense or system they reach: tactile, thermal, vibratory, auditory, visual, olfactory, visceral. Kim Burchiel's Surgical Management of Pain (2002) notes that even light, nonpainful stimuli can provoke pain. The kind of stimulus and its strength are therefore described separately. In this technical register the plural is almost always stimuli, often stacked behind such classifying adjectives.
- 3The structure with which a plant or insect delivers a sting.
Note
Here the word names the sting itself, as older natural history used it. It is the closest the word comes to the Latin prick behind the sense of a spur. Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants (1789) sets stimuli, the venom-armed stings of nettles, beside aculei, or prickles. A modern writer says sting or stinging hair, and stimulus usually means a trigger for a response.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from the Latin stimulus, meaning a goad or prick: a pointed stick used to drive animals forward.