lax

[laks] /læks/
adjective, laxer, laxest.
1.
not strict or severe; careless or negligent:
lax morals; a lax attitude toward discipline.
2.
loose or slack; not tense, rigid, or firm:
a lax rope; a lax handshake.
3.
not rigidly exact or precise; vague:
lax ideas.
4.
open, loose, or not retentive, as diarrheal bowels.
5.
(of a person) having the bowels unusually loose or open.
6.
open or not compact; having a loosely cohering structure; porous:
lax tissue; lax texture.
7.
Phonetics. (of a vowel) articulated with relatively relaxed tongue muscles.
Compare tense1 (def 4).
Origin
1350-1400; Middle English < Latin laxus loose, slack, wide; akin to languēre to languish; cognate with Old English slæc slack1
Related forms
laxly, adverb
laxness, noun
overlax, adjective
overlaxly, adverb
overlaxness, noun
Examples from the web for lax
  • The lax falciform ligament certainly gives no support though it probably limits lateral displacement.
  • On the back of the hand and fingers the subcutaneous tissue is lax, so that the skin is freely movable on the underlying parts.
  • The government has been so lax in pursuing some oil crimes that it can seem complicit.
  • There is no mention of lax enforcement of the remaining regulations.
  • Be neither too lax nor too precise in your use of language: the one fault ends in stiffness, the other in slang.
  • Mislabeling, lax oversight threaten people with allergies.
  • Loose skin can be compounded by underlying lax muscle.
  • The risk of rising inflation-the standard penalty for lax monetary policy-is slight given ample spare capacity in rich economies.
  • Runaway lending and lax standards, which fuelled the boom and contributed to the crisis, were others.
  • lax intellectual-property rights penalise cutting-edge research.
British Dictionary definitions for lax

lax

/læks/
adjective
1.
lacking firmness; not strict
2.
lacking precision or definition
3.
not taut
4.
(phonetics) (of a speech sound) pronounced with little muscular effort and consequently having relatively imprecise accuracy of articulation and little temporal duration. In English the vowel i in bit is lax
5.
(of flower clusters) having loosely arranged parts
Derived Forms
laxly, adverb
laxity, laxness, noun
Word Origin
C14 (originally used with reference to the bowels): from Latin laxus loose
Word Origin and History for lax
adj.

c.1400, "loose" (in reference to bowels), from Latin laxus "wide, loose, open," figuratively "loose, free, wide," from PIE root *(s)leg- "to be slack, be languid" (cf. Greek legein "to leave off, stop," lagos "hare," literally "with drooping ears," lagnos "lustful, lascivious," lagaros "slack, hollow, shrunken;" Latin languere "to be faint, weary," languidis "faint, weak, dull, sluggish, languid"). Of rules, discipline, etc., attested from mid-15c.

n.

"salmon," from Old English leax (see lox).

lax in Technology


LAnguage eXample.
A toy language used to illustrate compiler design.
["Compiler Construction", W.M. Waite et al, Springer 1984].
(1994-12-07)

Related Abbreviations for lax

LAX

Los Angeles International Airport