Stress refers to serious danger. It commonly describes an aversive state of stress to which a person cannot fully adapt, a seizing of property without legal process to force payment of a debt, and the thing taken by distraining; that which is seized to procure satisfaction, which gives the term a broader and more practical sense than a single short definition would suggest. Depending on context, it can also point to a physical, chemical, infective agent aggressing an organism, aggression toward an organism resulting in a response in an attempt to restore previous conditions, and the internal distribution of force across a small boundary per unit area of that boundary (pressure) within a body. It causes strain or deformation and is typically symbolised by σ or τ, so the category can cover literal uses, related ideas, and more figurative extensions of the same core meaning. Taken together, these meanings present Stress as a flexible theme rather than a narrowly technical label, covering the central idea people usually mean when they use the word while still leaving room for closely related senses that appear in real language. Additional shades of meaning include force externally applied to a body which cause internal stress within the body, emotional pressure suffered by a human being or other animal, the emphasis placed on a syllable of a word, emphasis placed on words in speaking, and emphasis placed on a particular point in an argument or discussion (whether spoken or written), which reinforce how the category can stretch across adjacent but still recognizable uses of the same term.
