> as lemmas

1854 Braithwaite in Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers 13 463 Many..accidents on railways..are to be ascribed to that progressive action which may be termed the ‘fatigue of metals’.

1874 E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech. I. 827/1 To fatigue is ascribed the breaking of car-axles.

1885 Engineering 10 July 31 The law of the fatigue and refreshment of metals.

1913 Sci. Amer. Suppl. 13 Dec. 372 (heading) A recently installed fatigue testing machine.

1937 Discovery July 194/2 The fatigue resistance of some metals.

1949 Jrnl. Royal Aeronaut. Soc. 53 788/2 A ray of hope that non-ferrous alloys could be developed which would show similar features in lack of ‘fatigue-memory’ to the ferritic steels.

1955 Times 8 July 5/1 Her Royal Highness drove across the airfield to see a Bristol Britannia airliner undergoing metal fatigue tests in a water tank.

1966 McGraw-Hill Encycl. Sci. & Technol. (rev. ed.) II. 284/2 The only examples of a fatigue fracture in bone are those seen usually in military training,..in which a soldier not previously used to repetitive exercise is forced to march 30 or 40 miles in a single day.

1929 Sci. Monthly Feb. 177/2 We might describe X-ray studies of..the changes during metal fatigue, and many other problems.

1958 Economist 11 Oct. 169/2 The Comet should, by rights, have been in service on the North Atlantic four years ago: the lapse of time is a measure of the work needed to stiffen its skin against metal fatigue that sent two of the original Comets in quick succession to the bottom of the Mediterranean.

1973 P. Dickinson Green Gene ix. 180 It's like metal fatigue. You stand the stresses OK for years, so you think you'll stand them for ever. Then you snap, under no load at all.

1991 J. Diski Happily ever After xix. 213 Jock's weariness..was more like metal fatigue in an airliner than a simple worn-down kind of tiredness.