lax

¹ American  

[laks] / læks /

adjective

laxer, laxest

1. not strict or severe; careless or negligent: a lax attitude toward discipline.

   lax morals;

   a lax attitude toward discipline.

2. loose or slack; not tense, rigid, or firm: a lax handshake.

   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.

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lax ² American  

[laks] / læks /

noun

Informal.

1. lacrosse.

   To handle my course load, I know I have to cut back on extracurricular activities, but no way am I giving up lax.

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lax British  

/ 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

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Other Word Forms

• laxity noun
• laxly adverb
• laxness noun
• overlax adjective
• overlaxly adverb
• overlaxness noun

Etymology

Origin of lax¹

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Latin laxus “loose, spacious, wide”; akin to languēre “to be sluggish, faint, unwell”; cognate with Old English slæc slack ¹

Origin of lax¹

First recorded in 1970–75; la(crosse) ( def. ) + x ³ ( def. ) “a cross,” (in the sense cross ( def. ), a pun on crosse, the stick used in lacrosse)

Example Sentences

He called the licensing system "the laxest in Europe".

From BBC

Maritime accidents occur regularly in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, often due to lax safety standards or bad weather.

From Barron's

But he didn’t become lax about the military buildup.

From The Wall Street Journal

Most of the ships flew flags of countries considered regulatory havens with lax oversight of sanctions, including Panama, Comoros and Malta.

From BBC

Credit-rating agencies and other financial institutions are ushering in new, more lax borrowing frameworks as AI becomes too expensive to play by the old rules.

From MarketWatch

Related Words

• careless
• indifferent
• lenient
• negligent
• sloppy
• soft
• vague