SG Heritage Dictionary

Lapse [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1828

1. laps. [Latin lapsus, from labor, to slide, to fall.]

2. A sliding, gliding or flowing; a smooth course; as the lapse of a stream; the lapse of time.

3. A falling or passing.

4. The lapse to indolence is soft and imperceptible, but the return to diligence is difficult.

5. A slip an error; a fault; a failing in duty; a slight deviation from truth or rectitude.

6. This Scripture may be usefully applied as a caution to guard against those lapses and fallings to which our infirmities daily expose us.

7. So we say, a lapse in style or propriety.

8. In ecclesiastical law, the slip or omission of a patron to present a clerk to a benefice, within six months after it becomes void. In this case, the benefice is said to be lapsed, or in lapse

9. In theology, the fall or apostasy of Adam.

Lapse [Verb intransitive] Webster's Dictionary 1828

1. laps.

2. To glide; to pass slowly, silently or by degrees.

3. This disposition to shorten our words by retrenching the vowels, is nothing else but a tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from which we descended.

4. To slide or slip in moral conduct; to fail in duty; to deviate from rectitude; to commit a fault.

5. To lapse in fullness is sorer than to lie for need.

6. To slip or commit a fault by inadvertency or mistake.

7. Homer, in his characters of Vulcan and Thersites, has lapsed into the burlesque character.

8. To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, by the omission or negligence of the patron.

9. If the archbishop shall not fill it up within six months ensuing, it lapses to the king.

10. To fall from a state of innocence, or from truth, faith or perfection.

11. Once more I will renew his lapsed powers.

Lapse [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. A gliding, slipping, or gradual falling; an unobserved or imperceptible progress or passing away,; -- restricted usually to immaterial things, or to figurative uses.

2. A slip; an error; a fault; a failing in duty; a slight deviation from truth or rectitude.

3. The termination of a right or privilege through neglect to exercise it within the limited time, or through failure of some contingency; hence, the devolution of a right or privilege.

4. A fall or apostasy.

Lapse [Verb intransitive] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. To pass slowly and smoothly downward, backward, or away; to slip downward, backward, or away; to glide; -- mostly restricted to figurative uses.

2. To slide or slip in moral conduct; to fail in duty; to fall from virtue; to deviate from rectitude; to commit a fault by inadvertence or mistake.

3. To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, or from the original destination, by the omission, negligence, or failure of some one, as a patron, a legatee, etc.

4. To become ineffectual or void; to fall.

Lapse [Verb transitive] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. To let slip; to permit to devolve on another; to allow to pass.

2. To surprise in a fault or error; hence, to surprise or catch, as an offender.

Lapsed [Participle passive] Webster's Dictionary 1828

Fallen; passed from one proprietor to another by the negligence of the patron; as a lapsed benefice. A lapsed legacy is one which falls to the heirs through the failure of the legatee, as when the legatee dies before the testator.

Lapsed [Adjective] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. Having slipped downward, backward, or away; having lost position, privilege, etc., by neglect; -- restricted to figurative uses.

2. Ineffectual, void, or forfeited; as, a lapsed policy of insurance; a lapsed legacy.

Lapsed [Imperfect tense and past participle] Webster's Dictionary 1913

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