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Lapse   /læps/   Listen
noun
Lapse  n.  
1.
A gliding, slipping, or gradual falling; an unobserved or imperceptible progress or passing away,; restricted usually to immaterial things, or to figurative uses. "The lapse to indolence is soft and imperceptible." "Bacon was content to wait the lapse of long centuries for his expected revenue of fame."
2.
A slip; an error; a fault; a failing in duty; a slight deviation from truth or rectitude. "To guard against those lapses and failings to which our infirmities daily expose us."
3.
(Law) The termination of a right or privilege through neglect to exercise it within the limited time, or through failure of some contingency; hence, the devolution of a right or privilege.
4.
(Theol.) A fall or apostasy.


verb
Lapse  v. t.  
1.
To let slip; to permit to devolve on another; to allow to pass. "An appeal may be deserted by the appellant's lapsing the term of law."
2.
To surprise in a fault or error; hence, to surprise or catch, as an offender. (Obs.) "For which, if be lapsed in this place, I shall pay dear."


Lapse  v. i.  (past & past part. lapsed; pres. part. lapsing)  
1.
To pass slowly and smoothly downward, backward, or away; to slip downward, backward, or away; to glide; mostly restricted to figurative uses. "A tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended." "Homer, in his characters of Vulcan and Thersites, has lapsed into the burlesque character."
2.
To slide or slip in moral conduct; to fail in duty; to fall from virtue; to deviate from rectitude; to commit a fault by inadvertence or mistake. "To lapse in fullness Is sorer than to lie for need."
3.
(Law)
(a)
To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, or from the original destination, by the omission, negligence, or failure of some one, as a patron, a legatee, etc.
(b)
To become ineffectual or void; to fall. "If the archbishop shall not fill it up within six months ensuing, it lapses to the king."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Lapse" Quotes from Famous Books



... as competition is free, the most active societies conform most closely to their static models. If we could check the five radical changes that are going on in a society that is very full of energy,—if, as it were, we could stop such an organism midway in its career of rapid growth and let it lapse into a stationary condition,—the shape that it would take would be not radically unlike the one which it had when we interposed the check on its progress. Taking on the theoretically static form would not strikingly alter its actual shape. The actual form of a highly ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... Owing to the lapse of centuries, very little is known with certainty of the life of Hippocrates, who was called with affectionate veneration by his successors "the divine old man," and who has been justly known to posterity as "the Father ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... note above his neighbours, so that the tone rose and sank, and there was no one soul erect in that Hall save Shagpat, he on his throne of cushions smiling behind the lathers, inanimate, serene as they that sin not. After an hour's lapse there came a pause, and the people hearkened for the voice of the King; but in the intervals a louder moan would strike their ears, and they whispered among themselves, "Tis that of the fakir, El Zoop!' and the moaning and howling prevailed again. And again ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... first wrote "happen." She scratched it out and put "occur" in its place. Not that Moldini would have noted the slip; simply that she would not permit herself the satisfaction of the false and self-excusing "happen." It had not been a "happen." It had been a deliberate folly, a lapse to the Mildred she had buried the day she sent Donald Keith away. When the note was on its way, she threw out all her medicines, and broke the new spraying apparatus Hicks had instructed ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... State reasons, has not been straightforwardly related. The letter, however, remaining and in fair preservation, there was always the possibility of the handwriting being identified; and this, after the lapse of over three hundred years, is ...
— The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605 • William Parker


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