There are three accounts of the origins of contemporary ideas, practices, and experiences related to stress. The first focuses on the etymology of the word. According to the _Oxford English Dictionary_, the term _stress_ comes from _strictus_, past participle of _stringere_ (tighten, draw tight) and also the source of the Old French _estrece_/_estrecier_ (narrowness, compression, oppression) and the Old English words _distress_ and _strict_. In the fourteenth century, the words _estrece/estrecier_ and _distress_ mutated into _stress_: the noun _stress_ meant a form of hardship, adversity, force, or pressure and, from the sixteenth century, physical injury; the verb _stress_ meant to subject (someone or -thing) to force or compulsion. The noun and verb _stress_ thus both referred to a quality of the environment, something external that affected a person or thing. An exception was the adjective _stressed_, which also in the sixteenth century opened the possibility of an internal condition, referring to something or someone as afflicted or distressed. Then in the seventeenth century, the noun _stress_ also came to refer to an internal quality, and in the nineteenth century, to a mix of outside pressure and inner reactions. From thereon, all three meanings—external, internal, or a mix—were used, setting the...