lapse means A temporary failure; a slip. It carries an Arena rating of 1660, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, lapse ranks #92 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #307 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #2,198 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #3,784 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
lapse is pronounced /læps/.
Why “lapse” is a great word
A temporary failure or slip from a standard, or the gradual act of falling into such a state. From Middle French laps, from Latin lāpsus ("a slipping, fall"), from lābī ("to slip, glide, fall"). Unlike an "error," which is any general mistake, or a "hiatus," which is a formal and deliberate gap, a lapse is specifically an unplanned, often imperceptible, slide from one condition into another. It is the single skipped paragraph in a contract read at midnight, the moment of looking up to realize you have driven ten miles without memory of the road, or the dust that settles on a language you once spoke fluently—the almost imperceptible point where maintenance becomes abandonment, and the slip, once made, cannot be unmade.
Etymology
From Middle French laps, from Latin lāpsus, from lābī (“to slip”). Doublet of lapsus.
noun
- A temporary failure; a slip.e.g.“memory lapse”
- A decline or fall in standards.e.g.“The lapse to indolence is soft and imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of activity” — 1751 September 10, Samuel Johnson, “No. CLV”, in The Rambler, →OCLC:
- A pause in continuity.
- An interval of time between events.e.g.“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.” — 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXVI”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 43:
- 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
- To fall away gradually; to subside.e.g.“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” — 1841, Jonathan Swift, “A letter to the Lord High Treasurer”, in The Works of Jonathan Swift, London: Henry Washbourne, →OCLC, page 288:
- To fall into error or heresy.
- To slip into a bad habit that one is trying to avoid.
- To become void.e.g.“The connections at Lewisham were never built, and the powers of the Act lapsed; but the spur at Nunhead was partly constructed.” — 1946 November and December, “The Why and The Wherefore: Abandoned Embankment at Nunhead, S.R.”, in Railway Magazine, page 392:
- 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.e.g.“...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.” — 1726, John Ayliffe, Parergon Juris Canonici Anglicani, London: Printed for the Author by D. Leach, →OCLC, page 116:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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