blood pressure

1. The pressure exerted by the blood against the walls of the arteries and veins; it varies during the heartbeat cycle, and according to a person's age, health and physical condition.

   the great majority of people who have serious conditions from high blood pressure suffer debilitating illness

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “XVII, XVIII, and XIX”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855 ↗:

     She threw her head back and inflated the lungs. “UPJOHN!” she boomed, rather like someone calling the cattle home across the sands of Dee, and I issued a kindly word of warning. “Watch that blood pressure, old ancestor.” “Never you mind my blood pressure. You let it alone, and it'll leave you alone. UPJOHN!”

   The nurse spent all day taking blood pressures at the hospital.

• French: tension artérielle
• German: Blutdruck
• Italian: pressione, pressione sanguigna, pressione del sangue
• Portuguese: pressão sanguínea, pressão
• Russian: кровяно́е давле́ние
• Spanish: presión sanguínea, tensión arterial, tensión venosa, presión arterial