noun, verb, lapsed, laps⋅ing.| 1. | an accidental or temporary decline or deviation from an expected or accepted condition or state; a temporary falling or slipping from a previous standard: a lapse of justice. |
| 2. | a slip or error, often of a trivial sort; failure: a lapse of memory. |
| 3. | an interval or passage of time; elapsed period: a lapse of ten minutes before the program resumed. |
| 4. | a moral fall, as from rectitude or virtue. |
| 5. | a fall or decline to a lower grade, condition, or degree; descent; regression: a lapse into savagery. |
| 6. | the act of falling, slipping, sliding, etc., slowly or by degrees. |
| 7. | a falling into disuse. |
| 8. | Insurance. discontinuance of coverage resulting from nonpayment of a premium; termination of a policy. |
| 9. | Law. the termination of a right or privilege through neglect to exercise it or through failure of some contingency. |
| 10. | Meteorology. lapse rate. |
| 11. | Archaic. a gentle, downward flow, as of water. |
| 12. | to fall or deviate from a previous standard; fail to maintain a normative level: Toward the end of the book the author lapsed into bad prose. |
| 13. | to come to an end; stop: We let our subscription to that magazine lapse. |
| 14. | to fall, slip, or sink; subside: to lapse into silence. |
| 15. | to fall into disuse: The custom lapsed after a period of time. |
| 16. | to deviate or abandon principles, beliefs, etc.: to lapse into heresy. |
| 17. | to fall spiritually, as an apostate: to lapse from grace. |
| 18. | to pass away, as time; elapse. |
| 19. | Law. to become void, as a legacy to someone who dies before the testator. |
| 20. | to cease being in force; terminate: Your insurance policy will lapse after 30 days. |

LAPSE language
A single assignment language for the Manchester dataflow machine.
["A Single Assignment Language for Data Flow Computing", J.R.W. Glauert, M.Sc Diss, Victoria U Manchester, 1978].
(1994-12-21)