Happy Wednesday! Architecture day. We’ve talked about decoupling systems, invalidating caches, and applying backpressure — today’s word is the control mechanism that actually enforces backpressure in production: throttle.
📖 Word of the Day: Throttle
- Word: throttle
- IPA: /ˈθrɒt.əl/
- Vietnamese meaning: giới hạn/hạn chế tốc độ (của request, traffic, hoặc tài nguyên) để bảo vệ hệ thống khỏi quá tải
- Example sentences:
- “We throttle requests at 100 per second per API key to protect the database.”
- “The client got a 429 error because it was throttled for exceeding its quota.”
- “If traffic spikes during the sale, the gateway will automatically throttle non-critical endpoints first.”
Listen and practice pronunciation:
Vocabulary Table
| Phrase | Vietnamese | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Rate limit | giới hạn số lượng request trong một khoảng thời gian | ”We set a rate limit of 1,000 requests per minute per client.” |
| Saturate | bão hòa, chiếm hết tài nguyên sẵn có | ”Once CPU saturates at 100%, response times climb fast.” |
| Gracefully degrade | suy giảm có kiểm soát, hệ thống vẫn hoạt động (ở mức thấp hơn) thay vì sập hoàn toàn | ”Under heavy load, the app gracefully degrades by disabling recommendations first.” |
| Spike | tăng đột biến (traffic, load, latency) | “We saw a traffic spike right after the marketing email went out.” |
| Circuit breaker | bộ ngắt mạch, cơ chế tự động chặn request tới một service đang lỗi | ”The circuit breaker tripped after five consecutive timeouts to the payment service.” |
🗣 Pronunciation Guide
“Throttle” breakdown — /ˈθrɒt.əl/:
- Starts with the “th” sound /θ/ — tongue lightly between your teeth, blow air, no voice (same “th” as in “think,” not “this”)
- Stress on the first syllable: THROT-tle, not throt-TLE
- The double “t” is a quick, almost swallowed stop — “-tle” sounds close to “-tul”
- Common mistake: dropping the “th” and saying “trottle” — keep the tongue between the teeth at the start
Practice sentence (read aloud 3x):
“When traffic spikes and CPU starts to saturate, we throttle low-priority requests so the system can gracefully degrade instead of crashing.”
✍️ Exercise 1: Fill in the Blank
Fill each blank with one word or phrase from today’s list: throttle, rate limit, saturate, gracefully degrade, spike, circuit breaker.
- “After three failed calls to the downstream service, the _______ opened and stopped sending more traffic.”
- “Our API returns a 429 status code when a client exceeds its _______.”
- “During Black Friday, order volume _______ to ten times the normal level.”
- “If the recommendation engine goes down, the homepage should _______ and just show trending items.”
- “The proxy will _______ image uploads first if the servers start to _______.”
Show answers
- circuit breaker
- rate limit
- spiked
- gracefully degrade
- throttle, saturate
✍️ Exercise 2: Translate to English
Translate these Vietnamese sentences using today’s vocabulary.
- “Chúng tôi giới hạn tốc độ request để bảo vệ cơ sở dữ liệu.”
- “Lưu lượng truy cập tăng đột biến sau khi bài viết được chia sẻ trên mạng xã hội.”
- “Hệ thống nên suy giảm có kiểm soát thay vì sập hoàn toàn khi quá tải.”
Show answers
- “We throttle requests to protect the database.”
- “Traffic spiked after the article was shared on social media.”
- “The system should gracefully degrade instead of crashing completely under load.”
💬 Idiom of the Day: “Hit the ceiling”
- Vietnamese meaning: chạm giới hạn tối đa, không thể tăng thêm được nữa (khác với nghĩa “nổi giận” trong văn nói đời thường — ở đây dùng theo nghĩa kỹ thuật, chỉ hệ thống/tài nguyên đã đạt mức trần)
- Example 1: “Our current database instance is going to hit the ceiling by next quarter if traffic keeps growing at this rate.”
- Example 2: “We throttled new signups because the free tier had hit the ceiling on our infrastructure budget.”
📺 Recommended Watching
- YouGlish — search “throttle” or “saturate” and hear native speakers use them in real technical talks
- Cambridge Dictionary — quick pronunciation and definition lookup
- ByteByteGo — short, visual explainers on rate limiting, circuit breakers, and system design patterns, great for picking up this exact vocabulary in context
🎯 Wednesday Challenge
Next time you’re describing a system under load — in a standup, a PR, or an incident writeup — use “throttle” instead of “limit” and “spike” instead of “sudden increase.” Precise, native-sounding technical vocabulary makes your explanations sound more authoritative, even in a two-sentence Slack message.