benchmark

English

Wikipedia

Etymology

From bench +‎ mark. Originally (attested circa 1842) a mark cut into a stone by land surveyors to secure a "bench" (from 19th century land surveying jargon, meaning a type of bracket), to mount measuring equipment. Figurative sense attested circa 1884.

Noun

benchmark (plural benchmarks)

1. A standard by which something is evaluated or measured.
2. A surveyor's mark made on some stationary object and shown on a map; used as a reference point.
3. (computing) A computer program that is executed to assess the performance of the runtime environment.

Translations

a standard for evaluating or measuring

• Albanian: etapë (sq)
• Dutch: ijkpunt (nl) n, maatstaf (nl)
• French: critère (fr) m
• German: Maßstab (de) m, Höhenfestpunkt (de) m, Kriterium (de) n

• Italian: riferimento (it) m
• Russian: критерий (ru) (kritérij) m, мерило (ru) (merílo) n, стандарт (ru) (standárt) m, показатель (ru) (pokazátel')

a surveyor's mark made on some stationary object and shown on a map

• French: point de référence (fr) m, repère (fr) m
• Hungarian: szintjel (hu)
• Portuguese: ponto de referência (pt)

• Russian: репер (ru) (reper)
• Swedish: fixpunkt (sv)

Verb

benchmark (third-person singular simple present benchmarks, present participle benchmarking, simple past and past participle benchmarked)

1. (transitive) To measure the performance of (an item) relative to another similar item in an impartial scientific manner.