Sorry, shorthand common in my neck of the woods. Used for any Thing per Your Favorite Time Unit, measured logarithmically. In this case, requests-per-second.
"Soak" is often used for "take" in engineering circles. "Zeroes" is often used for orders of magnitude in engineering circles. I've never before heard these put together in that fashion, however.
def not clearer. I know we are all supposed to be smart here, but maybe use more common words and language. People come from a lot of different backgrounds here.
(Edit: ah, typo. s/this this/with this. Clearer?)