stress test

¹

noun

1. a test, especially one conducted in a laboratory, to determine how much pressure, tension, wear, or the like a given product or material can withstand.
2. Medicine/Medical. a test of cardiovascular health made by recording heart rate, blood pressure, electrocardiogram, and other parameters while a person undergoes physical exertion.
3. a simulation test to determine how a given institution, system, etc., would perform under greater than usual stresses or pressures:

   the government’s stress test for big banks;

   mandatory stress tests for nuclear plants;

   a website stress test that simulates peak traffic.

stress-test

²

[ stres-test ]

verb (used with object)

1. to subject to a stress test.

Other Words From

• stress-testing noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of stress test¹

First recorded in 1970–75

Example Sentences

The pandemic was a stress test for these services, and they proved capable of delivering much of what we needed, when and where we needed it.

From MIT Technology Review

In many ways, the events of 2020 proved to be the ultimate stress test for AB InBev’s in-house team in Europe.

From Digiday

Venture capital as an asset class has survived the pandemic’s stress test.

From TechCrunch

This will be a huge stress test of Amazon’s infrastructure, but the e-commerce giant is in a better position than most to get through the challenge.

From Digiday

This might mean agreeing on security requirements for voting machines, plus anonymity standards, stress tests, and verification methods such as requiring a paper backup for every vote.

From MIT Technology Review

In a new memoir, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, Geithner offers his take on what really happened.

From The Daily Beast

A punching bag as treasury secretary, Geithner finally gets to unload in ‘Stress Test.’

From The Daily Beast

And finally, the implementation of the post-stress test rescue plan is also flawed.

From The Daily Beast

The economic assumptions behind the stress-test scenarios are also suspect.

From The Daily Beast

But a stress test is inherently ambiguous, and can be interpreted any which way you like.

From The Daily Beast

It would be prudent to have a thorough physical and, if you are over forty, also a stress test.

From Project Gutenberg