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 lax²

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

Lenders everywhere might have grown lax, which is why fraud-related defaults at some financial companies have rattled bank stocks.

From The Wall Street Journal

Mark Neuman, chief investment officer at Hero Asset Management, said it should be possible to discover the identities of those who placed the trades in question, and suggested the problem resulted more from lax oversight.

From Barron's

Justice Department, Curtis said he had learned of lax security and potential ballot stuffing in 2024, the year of the attempted recall against Crye.

From Los Angeles Times

This is why that February 2021 episode enjoyed a ratings spike, leading one to wonder if the whole lax vetting of “Bachelors” and “Bachelorette” contenders isn’t entirely accidental.

From Salon

Treasury, Emirati firms handle by far the world’s highest volume of Iran’s shadow funds, exploiting opaque registries and lax rules to keep Tehran solvent.

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

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