Meaning of pressure in English

pressure

noun

/ˈpreʃ.ər/ us

/ˈpreʃ.ɚ/

pressure noun (PUSHING)

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C2 [ U ]

the force you produce when you press something:

He put too much pressure on the door handle and it snapped.

You can stop bleeding by applying pressure close to the injured area.

C1 [ C or U ]

the force that a liquid or gas produces when it presses against an area:

gas/water pressure

The new material allows the company to make gas pipes which withstand higher pressures.

The gas is stored under pressure (= in a container which keeps it at a higher pressure than it would usually have).

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If you apply pressure to a cut it's meant to stop the bleeding.
She tried to cure the pain in my knee by putting manual pressure on the joint.
The alarm is activated by the lightest pressure.
My ankle is extremely painful if I put any pressure on it.
The vacuum inside the tube caused it to implode when the external air pressure was increased.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Physics: energy, force & power

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pressure noun (PERSUADING)

the act of trying to make someone else do something by arguing, persuading, etc.:

public/political pressure

Teachers are under increasing pressure to work longer hours.

[ + to infinitive ] Pressure to abandon the new motorway is increasing.

The government is facing pressure from environmental activists.

The Defence Secretary resigned under pressure from the Prime Minister (= because the Prime Ministerforced him to).

She's putting pressure on him (= trying to persuade him) to get married.

formal The international community is trying to bring pressure to bear on the government (= trying to persuade them) to resolve the situation.

B2 [ C or U ]

a difficult situation that makes you feel worried or unhappy:

She's got a lot of pressure on her at work just now.

Be nice to him - he's been under a lot of pressure recently.

Can you work well under pressure?

the pressures of work

so no pressure then! humorous

something that you say when what someone has just said makes you feel that you must try very hard to do something:

"These exams are the most important of all." "Oh, so no pressure then!"

[ U ]

a situation in a football game in which attacking players are moving forward and getting closer to scoring a goal, and players from the opposing team have to work hard to stop them from scoring:

Ryan Giggs put the home defence under pressure.

Playing four forwards puts too much pressure on the defence.

More examplesFewer examples

They are putting pressure on the government to equalize state pension ages between men and women.
Some managers exert considerable pressure on their staff to work extra hours without being paid.
He's putting pressure on me to change my mind.
Despite renewed pressure to give up the occupied territory, they will not yield.
Her confession could not be admitted as evidence because it was given under pressure from the police.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Causing somebody to act

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Urging & persuading

Anxiety and worry - general words

Trying and making an effort

Competing in sport

Football/soccer

pressure

verb [ T ]

/ˈpreʃ.ər/ us

/ˈpreʃ.ɚ/

(UK pressurize)

to strongly persuade someone to do something they do not want to do:

She was pressured into joining the club.

Synonym

coerce formal

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Causing somebody to act

See more results »

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Urging & persuading

(Definition of pressure from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

pressure | American Dictionary

pressure

noun

/ˈpreʃ·ər/

pressure noun (FORCE)

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[ C/U ]

the force produced by pressing against something:

[ U ] air/blood/water pressure

[ C/U ] physics

Pressure is also the force that is put on a surface with reference to the area of the surface.

pressure noun (INFLUENCE)

[ C/U ]

a strong, often threatening influence on an organization or person:

[ C ] Competitive pressures will force the company to sell off its factories.

[ C/U ]

If you put pressure on someone, you try to cause that person to do something by persuading or threatening them:

[ U ] They put a lot of pressure on him to resign.

pressure noun (WORRY)

[ U ]

worry and fear caused by the feeling that you have too many responsibilities and cares:

I like this job – there’s not so much pressure to produce every day.

pressure

verb [ T ] us

/ˈpreʃ·ər/

She was pressured into signing the agreement.

(Definition of pressure from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

pressure | Business English

pressure

noun [ C or U ]

/ˈpreʃər/ us

Add to word list Add to word list

a situation in which someone tries to make someone else do something by arguing, persuading, etc.:

public/political pressure

The guidelines were imposed under pressure from Congress.

a difficult situation, or the worried feeling that such a situation can give you:

pressure on sb She's got a lot of pressure on her at work just now.

He doesn't work well under pressure.

The pressures of work are making her depressed.

put pressure on sb/sth

to put someone or something in a difficult situation, or to try and persuade or force someone to do something:

Analysts said the lack of supply would undoubtedly put pressure on prices.

(Definition of pressure from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of pressure

pressure

Initially, as the plasma plume is formed, the particle pressure is very high due to high value of pressure and density.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Since the key issue is the psychological pressure that law can exert on every individual mind, the law must be clear, well diffused, and foreseeable.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For instance, over-blowing on a wind instrument can cause an octave rise, which holds as the pressure is reduced.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The duct was then replaced and the oscillating pressure measured in similar conditions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The surprising behaviour of the surfaces of constant total pressure occurs entirely in the boundary layer.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This residue in its turn is then subjected to distillation under reduced pressure to give both a vacuum distillate and a vacuum residue.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Possibly, this urban market absorbed part of the area's rural workforce, thereby lightening the pressure on those who sought access to arable land.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

High pressure studies of energy transfer and strongly coupled bacteriochlorophyll dimers in photosynthetic protein complexes.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The right ventricular systolic pressure tends to decrease with age.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Thus, each year the worms were subjected to selection pressure during 2 steps, and to genetic drift during 22 steps.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Following a pressure increase in the pipette, the cell suspension was transferred to seminiferous tubules (dark blue).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The turbulence energy balance is examined, including the separate effects of vertical diffusion of pressure and local kinetic energy.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, escalating divergence of the populations is unlikely in the presence of gene flow unless they experience persistently different selection pressures.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The vertical structure of both the wind velocity and pressure fields shows interesting variation along the wave profile.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The basic uncertainty in pressure readings was estimated t o be 0.003 vertical inches of water.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of pressure

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with pressure

pressure

These are words often used in combination with pressure.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

added pressure

That would have been an added pressure to make sales.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

ambient pressure

The results show that the ambient pressure has an important effect on the properties of plasmas such as intensity, emission lifetime and line broadening.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

applied pressure

He also considered the effects of an applied pressure gradient.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all collocations with pressure

What is the pronunciation of pressure?

Translations of pressure

in Chinese (Traditional)

推, 壓力, （液體或氣體產生的）壓力…

Meaning of pressure in English

pressure noun (PUSHING)

pressure noun (PERSUADING)

pressure | American Dictionary

pressure noun (FORCE)

pressure noun (INFLUENCE)

pressure noun (WORRY)

pressure

pressure | Business English

Examples of pressure

Collocations with pressure

pressure

Translations of pressure

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