blood pressure

blood pressure (plural blood pressures)

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!” [...] Again I begged her to keep an eye on her blood pressure and not get so worked up, and once more she brushed me off, this time with a curt request that I would go and boil my head. [...] I could see Aunt Dahlia swelling slowly like a chunk of bubble gum, and a less prudent man than Bertram Wooster would have warned her again about her blood pressure. [...] I garaged the car and went to Aunt Dahlia's sanctum to ascertain whether she had cooled off at all since I had left her, for I was still anxious about that blood pressure of hers. One doesn't want aunts going up in a sheet of flame all over the place. She wasn't there, having, I learned later, withdrawn to her room to bathe her temples with eau de Cologne and do Yogi deep-breathing [...]

2. The measurement of a person's blood pressure, expressed as systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure readings.

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