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lapsing

 [laps]   Origin

lapse

   [laps] noun, verb, lapsed, laps·ing.
noun
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.
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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.
COLLAPSE
verb (used without object)
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.
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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.
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Lapsing is always a great word to know.
So is gobo. Does it mean:
a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.
the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.
LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...
Origin:
1520–30; < Latin lāpsus an error, slipping, failing, equivalent to lāb(ī) to slide, slip, fall, make a mistake + -sus, for -tus suffix of v. action

Related forms
laps·er, noun
un·laps·ing, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
Cite This Source Link To lapsing
Etymonline
Word Origin & History

lapse
1520s, "slip of the memory," from M.Fr. laps "lapse," from L. lapsus "a slipping and falling, flight (of time), falling into error," from labi "to slip, glide, fall." Meaning "a moral slip" is from 1580s; that of "a falling away from one's faith" is from 1650s. Legal sense of "termination of a right
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or privilege" first recorded 1560s. The verb is first attested 1640s. Related: Lapsed; lapses.
COLLAPSE
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source
Related Words
lapse
Matching Quote
"The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank,—for the sun acts on one side first,—and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me,—had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (leibo, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; lobos, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words); externally, a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single-lobed, or B, double-lobed), with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the gutteral g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feather and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit."
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