throttle

Definition

In tech contexts, the art of intentionally slowing down a process before it crashes your entire system—like a bouncer limiting entry to an overcrowded club. Originally referring to the valve controlling fuel flow in engines, it's now the savior preventing your API from melting down when a million requests hit simultaneously. When your cloud provider says they're "throttling" you, it's corporate-speak for "you're using too much of what we sold you."

Example Usage

After our app went viral, AWS started throttling our database connections, which was their polite way of saying we needed to upgrade our plan immediately.

Source: Common industry terminology

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