stresses

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of stress.

   Years of financial stresses had taken a toll on the family.

   The metal failed once the internal stresses exceeded its tolerance.

   Note

   A plural that belongs only to the countable senses of the noun. Engineers speak of the stresses within a beam, symbolized σ or τ. Biologists speak of the stresses acting on an organism, and phoneticians of the stresses falling on syllables. Emotional pressure is uncountable: people are under stress, so "financial stresses" names separate strains rather than a feeling. The same spelling also serves as the verb form.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of stress.

   The manual stresses that the machine must cool down before cleaning.

   In every lecture she stresses the difference between correlation and causation.

   Note

   Here the object decides the meaning. Something that stresses a beam strains it, a speaker who stresses a syllable or a word gives it prominence, and an argument that stresses a point insists on it. With no object at all, as in "he stresses before every exam," the verb means worrying. That intransitive use is informal: natural in conversation, out of place in a report.

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