stressed-out
Americanadjective
Usage
What does stressed-out mean? Stressed-out means experiencing a lot of emotional stress. The adjective stressed can mean the same thing. Both terms often imply that the level of stress is intense or higher than usual—that stress has built up and is becoming hard to deal with. The phrasal verb stress out can mean to experience stress, as in Don’t stress out about the meeting—it’s not a big deal. It can also mean to cause someone to experience stress, as in You’re really stressing me out. The term stressed-out comes from the past tense of this sense: someone who is stressed-out has been stressed out by someone or something (or, as is often the case, by a combination of different factors). Stressed-out is commonly spelled without a hyphen, as stressed out. Example: During the week of final exams, the library is filled with stressed-out students frantically trying to study.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
That hit a chord with stressed-out youth struggling in China's highly competitive job market and sluggish economy.
From Barron's • Feb. 5, 2026
Masha Maltsava, a Los Angeles-based photographer, says she spent much of her young adulthood stressed-out and sleep-deprived.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 1, 2025
Best known for hosting Animal Planet's "My Cat From Hell," Galaxy has a robust library of instructional and advisory YouTube videos and a gift for putting stressed-out cats and people more at ease.
From Salon • Dec. 6, 2024
One of p53’s roles is to orchestrate cellular senescence, telling stressed-out, unruly cells to stop dividing before they cause problems.
From Science Magazine • May 16, 2024
“It will, I guess. She’s been so stressed-out lately.”
From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
