Lapse

How to spell lapse

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lapse

What does lapse mean?

1. nounA brief failure, slip, or interruption, especially of memory, attention, or standards.
2. verbTo gradually fail, expire, or slip from a former state or right.

Lapse in a sentence

• noun

  A momentary lapse of concentration caused the spelling mistake.

• verb

  The insurance policy will lapse if the premium is not paid on time.

• noun

  After a long lapse in contact, the old friends finally wrote to each other again.

• verb

  Without regular practice, his fluency began to lapse within months.

Where does lapse come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin noun lapsus, meaning 'a slip, a fall, or a gliding away', which was formed from the verb labi, meaning 'to slip, glide, or fall'. In its earliest English use during the early 1500s it carried the sense of a moral slip or a falling away from faith or duty, a small fault rather than a great sin. From that idea of slipping came the broader modern senses: a brief failure of attention or memory, and the gradual sliding away of time. The legal and insurance meaning, where a right, policy, or membership 'lapses', grew from the same image of something quietly slipping out of force. The same labi root survives in relatives such as 'collapse', 'relapse', and 'elapse', all of which keep that core picture of falling or slipping.

How the word is built

• laps- (from Latin lapsus: a slip or fall)
• -e