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

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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)

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Explanation

Those parents who let their kids eat all their Halloween candy the night of October 31st? Their parenting style might be described as lax. A paperclip chain used as a bike lock? That's an example of lax security. While contemplating the word lax, you may note that it's the same as the first syllable in laxative. This is not a coincidence: lax entered English as a noun describing a substance taken or administered to relax the bowels. Interestingly, the modern definition of lax is closer to the Latin source word, laxus — an adjective meaning "loose." Now, lax can refer to any phenomenon that is insufficiently stringent or so slack as to be basically ineffectual. For example, "The entire class performed incredibly well on the test, largely due to the sleepy professor's lax supervision."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

lax laxer laxest

The farmer has criticized security services for lax security around the base and for leaving residents exposed.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Jacob Coxon -- who resigned from Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI -- publicly accused both startups of lax security standards and "gambling with our lives."

From Barron's ● Sep. 13, 2026

It was lax marking that led to Odegaard's winner, while a lack of creativity from the bench left Chelsea short as Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta's substitutes ultimately helped guide the hosts to victory.

From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026

While many states require NIL agent registration, enforcement is lax and there is no unified certification program, which opens the field to practically anyone.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026

Griff had feared that the company might have grown lax under Harry Strickland, who had always seemed more concerned with making friends than enforcing discipline; but it would seem his worries had been misplaced.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

Supporters say the laxer regime could encourage more companies to go public; investors, hungry for data on corporate performance, oppose less-frequent reporting.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026

More than two decades ago the country experienced what author Helen Gordon described as a "Saharan gold rush", fuelled in part by laxer regulations and a more stable political environment than some of its neighbours.

From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2025

And open-access publishers that charge authors to publish their work also have an incentive to publish as much as possible, which could lead to laxer quality control.

From Science Magazine ● May 31, 2024

Coinbase and other firms have argued that the U.S. should be friendlier to the industry and that clearer rules are necessary to help American crypto companies compete with exchanges in countries with laxer regulations.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2024

And for this reason the laxer right had to conform to the stricter one, and came to be considered as appendant to it.

From Villainage in England Essays in English Mediaeval History by Paul Vinogradoff

He labelled the licensing system as the "laxest in Europe" as he pointed out the UK was one of only three countries to rely upon self-reporting of visual conditions affecting the ability to drive.

From BBC ● Apr. 18, 2025

But as a rapidly gentrifying city with some of the highest income inequality in the nation — and in a state with some of the laxest gun laws — gang culture has changed.

From New York Times ● Jan. 13, 2023

Today California has some of the laxest rules on the subject in the country.

From Economist ● Dec. 8, 2016

While the rest of my physique is mediocre by the laxest standards, I started adulthood with an exemplary foot.

From The New Yorker ● May 16, 2016

Really good society, even in its laxest mood, would scarcely support quite so many.

From Punch, or the London Charivari. Volume 93, September 10, 1887 by Various

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Related Words

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

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