Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

thundering herd

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.90 in modern English

Syllables: thun-der-ing herd
IPA

23

Scrabble Score

14

Letters

3

Syllables

9

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The undesirable situation where a large number of processes waiting for an event are awoken whenever the event occurs, and then engage in a conflict over which process handles the event.

Uncountable

Example Sentences

"Adding to execution and monitoring challenges is the “thundering herd” problem endemic to distributed systems, also discussed in Chapter 24. Given a large enough periodic pipeline, for each cycle, potentially thousands of workers immediately start work."

Usage

Uncountable

Questions

What does thundering herd mean?: The undesirable situation where a large number of processes waiting for an event are awoken whenever the event occurs, and then engage in a conflict over which process handles the event.

How to pronounce thundering herd

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “thundering herd”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “thundering herd”.
Repeat and practice — Say “thundering herd” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.