pressure to excel
- noun
:
presión para sobresalir
- feel pressure to excel
Examples
-
At school, she was stimulated and interested in studying, but also under self-induced pressure to excel.
Academic text (2002) -
It is suggested that parents and teachers be aware that identified intellectually gifted children are vulnerable to pressure to excel at schoolwork, with a possible loss of creative potential.
Academic text (1994) -
Many students today feel a constant pressure to excel in their academic performance.
-
The pressure to excel can sometimes lead to stress and anxiety among high school students.
-
He experienced a lot of pressure to excel from his coaches while training for the national competition.
Synonyms
∞
3.1
A strong feeling of stress from difficult demands
1
4.9
A heavy feeling of pressure because you have important duties
Antonyms
How Pressured
∞
3.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'pressure' (stress/demands) plus the infinitive 'to excel' (to perform exceptionally), so a learner who knows the constituents can infer it means stress to achieve high performance. The noun + to-infinitive construction is a regular, cross-linguistically common composition in English (e.g. 'pressure to succeed'), making this immediately comprehensible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Pressure to excel creates a clear picture: pressure is like a heavy weight pushing down and excel means to rise above others or 'do very well'. So the phrase means the stress of being pushed to 'do very well' and meet very high standards.