diff --git a/src/intrinsics.cpp b/src/intrinsics.cpp
index 444a76b853f7d..1d9844e20e944 100644
--- a/src/intrinsics.cpp
+++ b/src/intrinsics.cpp
@@ -50,6 +50,14 @@ JL_DLLEXPORT uint32_t jl_get_LLVM_VERSION(void)
         ;
 }
 
+extern "C" JL_DLLEXPORT int8_t jl_is_memdebug() {
+#ifdef MEMDEBUG
+    return true;
+#else
+    return false;
+#endif
+}
+
 /*
   low-level intrinsics design: TODO: fix description below
   functions like add_int expect unboxed values of matching bit-length.
diff --git a/test/misc.jl b/test/misc.jl
index bf3795ffb8051..e91c3ca135b8c 100644
--- a/test/misc.jl
+++ b/test/misc.jl
@@ -230,7 +230,8 @@ module Tmp14173
     A = randn(2000, 2000)
 end
 whos(IOBuffer(), Tmp14173) # warm up
-@test @allocated(whos(IOBuffer(), Tmp14173)) < 10000
+const MEMDEBUG = ccall(:jl_is_memdebug, Bool, ())
+@test @allocated(whos(IOBuffer(), Tmp14173)) < (MEMDEBUG ? 20000 : 8000)
 
 ## test conversion from UTF-8 to UTF-16 (for Windows APIs)