benchmarking

[bench-mahr-king]

noun

1. the act or practice of measuring something against a standard, or of testing it in order to develop such a standard.

   The system measures nursing outcomes on a numerical scale, facilitating the benchmarking of nursing practices across facilities and jurisdictions.

Word History and Origins

Origin of benchmarking¹

First recorded in 1965–70; benchmark ( def. ) + -ing ¹ ( def. )

Example Sentences

Its release in August came as something of a disappointment, with benchmarking tests suggesting GPT-5 was only mildly better than existing rivals from Google and Elon Musk’s xAI.

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That was much weaker than the 50,000 jobs economists expected to see added in September, a divergence that was likely because ADP conducted an annual preliminary benchmarking of its payroll data.

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The benchmarking process can result in wider month-to-month swings and throw off expectations.

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Efforts are underway in the U.S. to increase government investment in the technology, including the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, a project of the Department of Defense.

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Derivatives holdings are subject to a common risk-management calculation that compares their risk of loss to an underlying benchmark, said Rahul Sen Sharma, president and co-CEO of Indxx, which provides benchmarking services for ETFs that uses derivatives.

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