Relax

How to spell relax

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce relax

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does relax mean?

1. verbTo become or make less tense, anxious, or rigid; to rest and ease the mind or body.

Relax in a sentence

• After a long week at the office she likes to relax with a quiet film.

• The physiotherapist told him to relax his shoulders before the stretch.

Where does relax come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb relaxare, meaning 'to loosen' or 'to open out again', formed from the prefix re-, here suggesting a return or reversal, and laxus, an adjective meaning 'loose', 'slack' or 'not tight'. The same laxus root gives English the word 'lax' for something slack or careless, and it even lies behind 'release', which travelled through a sister form. English took relax in the late 1300s, originally in a fairly physical sense of making something less rigid or tense, such as loosening the bowels or easing a strain. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from loosening the body to easing the mind, so that by the modern era it chiefly describes calming down and resting. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, with the tricky part being only that single x carrying the 'ks' sound that the root laxus supplies.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• lax (loose, slack) from Latin laxus