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lag

[lag]

verb (used without object)

to fail to maintain a desired pace or to keep up; fall or stay behind: After five minutes of hard running, some of them began to lag.

to move or develop slowly, as toward a goal or objective, or in relation to an associated factor (often followed by behind): to lag behind in production.

to delay or fail in reaching full development: The factory lags regularly in making its quota.

to hang back; linger; delay: The old friends lagged because they wanted to talk some more.

to decrease, wane, or flag gradually, as in intensity: Interest lagged as the meeting went on.

EXPAND

Marbles. to throw one's shooting marble toward a line (lag line) on the ground in order to decide on the order of play.

Billiards, Pool. string (def. 17b).

COLLAPSE

verb (used with object)

to fail to keep up with: The industry still lags the national economy.

Obsolete. to cause to lag.

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Lag is one of our favorite verbs.

So is fletcherise. Does it mean:

to steal or take dishonestly (money, esp. public funds, or property entrusted to one's care); embezzle.

to chew (food) slowly and thoroughly.

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noun

10.

a lagging or falling behind; retardation.

11.

a person who lags behind, is the last to arrive, etc.

12.

an interval or lapse of time: There was a developmental lag in the diffusion of ideas.

13.

Mechanics. the amount of retardation of some motion.

14.

Electricity. the retardation of one alternating quantity, as current, with respect to another related alternating quantity, as voltage, often expressed in degrees.

EXPAND

15.

Marbles, Billiards. the act of lagging.

COLLAPSE

Origin:
1505–15; < Scandinavian: compare Norwegian lagga to go slowly

Synonyms
1. loiter, linger. 10. slowing, slowdown.

Antonyms
1. hasten.

Example Sentences

There are ways to defeat the shutter lag that can mar action shots.

They may lag in offering courses and degrees online, but does it matter.

Actual numbers for such things are usually available only with a lag.

EXPAND

There are ways to defeat the shutter lag that can mar action shots.

They may lag in offering courses and degrees online, but does it matter.

Actual numbers for such things are usually available only with a lag.

Here are five tips to avoid jet lag and a few remedies to overcome the symptoms if a time zone jump doesn't agree with you.

Between your site and my internet connection, there is too much lag to be able to view the video.

The lag between current events and their appearance in films is hard to explain at times.

To anchor to a masonry wall, use lag screws and shields.

Many of the six hundred thousand active users experienced serious lag and lost connectivity to the.

Many federal agencies also lag in submitting relevant records to the system.

Womens recruiting budgets continue to lag behind mens in many big-time programs.

If the current recovery is indeed jobless, wages will continue to lag.

But studies lag on the blooms, which depend on a complex interplay of factors.

Melatonin supplements are popular for self-treating insomnia or jet lag.

Otherwise, the lag time could leave you missing an important destination.

Since then, however, unemployment has seemed to follow the turnaround in capacity utilization only with a long lag.

The salaries of state-employed professionals lag behind private sector peers when comparisons are made correctly.

But they have tended to lag behind in terms of their profitability.

Americans lag far behind other nations in time off the job.

Ocean temperatures will lag because it is such a huge volume.

Punch the gas and power is instantaneous and dramatic, with not even a hint of turbo lag.

If this is the case, drill new holes and install additional lag bolts elsewhere along the base of the post.

It's about guiding students who typically lag behind.

The fact is that boys' language skills tend to lag behind those of girls' the world over.

And the years-long lag between emergences mean no predator can depend on their annual availability.

At every stage of early development, human babies lag behind infants from other species.

However, women still lag far behind men in full professorships and tenure track positions in math-intensive fields.

If recent research is a guide, such stocks are likely to lag behind the market.

Sometimes there's a big lag between making the decision, and being able to make it happen.

And on almost any socio-economic indicator, these areas lag behind the rest of the country.

Thus, these dust particles lag behind the comet when they fall back to the sun, forming a trail in the comet's path.

In this case, as in so many others, accounts by science journalists lag far behind the actual development of thinking.

Picture and sound quality lag behind their camcorder big.

Their facial expressions seem to lag a few beats behind their words.

Decimalisation will ease the problems of jet lag by cutting the number of time zones.

Awareness and safety procedures lag far behind those in more developed economies.

If you lok at the evidence without preconceptions, you'd see that co2 levels lag temp increases by several years.

It moved along through the menus speedily, and it pulled up video and pictures without much lag.

Indeed, the money that universities in the country get from the government does lag behind world averages for developed.

Yet it has been the exception, not the norm-which has mostly been to lag behind even the public equity markets.

The main challenge has been, of course, accentuated by the lag time necessary to get our trail legs beneath.

The time could be transmitted to us and the transmission time lag could be compensated for.

It makes all our moaning about shutter lag seem a little petty.

Women have achieved academic parity on the tenure track in the humanities but still lag woefully behind in the sciences.

He conquers jet lag by refusing to leave his body in any one time-zone long enough for it to adjust.

They seem to lag in age next to the other stars with which they formed-appearing.

But the growth of food supply tends to lag population.

Firing off multiple shots in succession is a breeze, and lag between photos is basically a thing of the past.

Publishers have made e-books available in similar ways, but when it comes to required texts, they lag well behind.

There are signs of recovery, but they lag those in the rest of the country.

Melatonin-a natural sleep aid that can help you beat jet lag when you are expected to hit the ground running.

Faster and faster also means entering time dilation relativistic lag with the computer.

To lose confidence in free will seemingly introduced a lag between conscious choice and.

In my field there is no huge time lag between an acceptance and publication.

On indicators of social and economic health, these migrants lag.

Jet lag happens when the body's inner clock falls out of sync with daily cycles of light, meals, and rest.

Kindle's latest upgrade has also cut down on that page-turn lag mentioned in this article.

Quick on the draw with barely perceptible shutter lag.

It is a long flight but fortunately you won't be changing too many time zones so jet lag is not a problem.

Such adjustments take time, causing a lag between pressing the shutter-release button and actually capturing the image.

There's no lag at all, so you can switch between displays without missing a beat.

Freehand annotations should be crisp and smoothly rendered, with no lag time.

English students lag behind others who started later.

They hypothesize that this is due to a lag in the rates of rise and fall of their float that could be fixed with a modification.

So there might be a significant lag time between when you submit an application and when the job starts anyway.

The poor tend to suffer disproportionately from inflation as wage increases tend to lag price increases.

There was never any stuttering during playback, although there is a slight lag when scrolling through track lists.

Generally, inflation pushes salaries up after a lag period.

And even corporate aspirations in the rich world lag far behind how much the public expects business to contribute to society.

Shutter lag was basically non-existent, and images were sharp and nicely balanced in all situations.

Several hours later, jet lag proved no match for religious authority as a muezzin's predawn chant led the call to prayer.

Economic commentators tend to underestimate lag times when it comes to long-run technological developments.

Impressively, lag time is imperceptible when switching between views.

Often they are not, because there has been a lag of a couple of months at this point.

Of course there's a lag phase between birth rate and migration.

Wage increases lag price increases, making wage earners poorer.

RA review the data on the lag in the effect of loosening monetary policy, and use of the money.

The second is the increasing lag between sentencing and execution.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

verb (used with object)

to send to penal servitude; imprison.

noun

a convict or ex-convict.

a period or term of penal servitude; prison sentence.

Origin:
1565–75; origin uncertain

noun

one of the staves or strips that form the periphery of a wooden drum, the casing of a steam cylinder, or the like.

Masonry. a crosspiece between ribs in a centering.

verb (used with object)

to line or cover (an excavation) with lagging.

to cover with insulation, as a steam boiler, to prevent radiation of heat.

Origin:
1665–75; < Scandinavian; compare Swedish lagg stave

Link To lag

Collins

World English Dictionary

lag¹ (læɡ)

—vb , lags, lagging, lagged
1.	(often foll by behind) to hang (back) or fall (behind) in movement, progress, development, etc
2.	to fall away in strength or intensity
3.	to determine an order of play in certain games, as by rolling marbles towards a line or, in billiards, hitting cue balls up the table against the top cushion in an attempt to bring them back close to the headrail

—n
4.	the act or state of slowing down or falling behind
5.	the interval of time between two events, esp between an action and its effect
6.	an act of lagging in a game, such as billiards

[C16: of obscure origin]

lag² (læɡ)

—n
1.	a convict or ex-convict (esp in the phrase old lag)
2.	a term of imprisonment

—vb , lags, lagging, lagged
3.	(tr) to arrest or put in prison

[C19: of unknown origin]

lag³ (læɡ)

—vb , lags, lagging, lagged
1.	(tr) to cover (a pipe, cylinder, etc) with lagging to prevent loss of heat

—n
2.	the insulating casing of a steam cylinder, boiler, etc; lagging
3.	a stave or lath

[C17: of Scandinavian origin; related to Swedish lagg stave]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

lag

"fail to keep pace," 1520s, from earlier adj. meaning "last" (1510s), e.g. lag-mon "last man," possibly from a Scand. source (cf. Norw. lagga "go slowly"), or some dialectal version of last, lack, or delay. Related: Lag; lagging. First record of lag time is from 1956.

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"In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it."

-H.G. Wells

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