lapse
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lapse
- /læps/ UK, US
Sounds like laps · Rhymes with -æps
Where it comes from
From Middle French laps, from Latin lāpsus, from lābī (“to slip”). Doublet of lapsus.
noun lapses
- A temporary failure; a slip. memory lapse
- A decline or fall in standards. The lapse to indolence is soft and imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of activity
- A pause in continuity.
- An interval of time between events. Still onward winds the dreary way; I with it; for I long to prove No lapse of moons can canker Love, Whatever fickle tongues may say.
- A termination of a right etc., through disuse or neglect.
- A marked decrease in air temperature with increasing altitude because the ground is warmer than the surrounding air.
- A common-law rule that if the person to whom property is willed were to die before the testator, then the gift would be ineffective.
- A fall or apostasy.
verb lapses · lapsing · lapsed
- To fall away gradually; to subside. This perpetual disposition to shorten our words by retrenching the vowels, is nothing else but a tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended
- To fall into error or heresy. To lapſe in Fullneſſe / Is ſorer, than to lye for Neede: and Falſhood / Is worſe in Kings, than Beggers.
- To slip into a bad habit that one is trying to avoid.
- To become void. The connections at Lewisham were never built, and the powers of the Act lapsed; but the spur at Nunhead was partly constructed.
- To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, or from the original destination, by the omission, negligence, or failure of somebody, such as a patron or legatee. ...and if the archbishop shall not fill it up within six Months ensuing, it lapses to the King, but according to the Canon Law to the Pope.
