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Lax

adj, name, noun, slang

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Lenient and allowing for deviation; not strict.

    "The rules are fairly lax, but you have to know which ones you can bend."

  2. 2
    Loose; not tight or taut.

    "The rope fell lax."

  3. 3
    Lacking care; neglectful, negligent.

    "The guard was paying no attention whatever to the running of his train, in total disregard of rules, and, as the recently-published report of a Ministry of Transport Inspecting Officer of Railways shows, there were other disquieting features in the case, such as ignorance on the part of responsible men of rules and appendix instructions and a lax attitude to regulations of which they professed to be aware, combined with failure to look at staff notice boards."

  4. 4
    Describing an associative monoidal functor.
  5. 5
    Having a looseness of the bowels; diarrheal. archaic
Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    (of a vowel) Produced with relatively little constriction of the vocal tract.
Adjective
  1. 1
    emptying easily or excessively wordnet
  2. 2
    lacking in rigor or strictness wordnet
  3. 3
    lacking in firmness or tension; not taut wordnet
  4. 4
    pronounced with muscles of the tongue and jaw relatively relaxed (e.g., the vowel sound in ‘bet’) wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Los Angeles International Airport

    "I have visited more than half a dozen carrier training facilities, spent over 150 hours on jumpseats, piloted a Lockheed 1011 from MIA to LAX, visited numerous towers, rapcons, and centers, and discussed our commercial Air Transport System with everyone involved."

  2. 2
    A surname.
Noun
  1. 1
    A salmon. Scotland, UK, dialectal
  2. 2
    lacrosse. slang, uncountable

    "“I'm not playing lax this term,” Mimah said."

  3. 3
    Clipping of laxative. abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, informal

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English lax, from Old English leax (“salmon”), from Proto-West Germanic *lahs (“salmon”), from Proto-Germanic *lahsaz (“salmon”), from Proto-Indo-European *laḱs- (“salmon, trout”). Cognate with Middle Dutch lacks, lachs, lasche (“salmon”), Middle Low German las (“salmon”), German Lachs (“salmon”), Norwegian laks (“salmon”), Danish laks (“salmon”), Swedish lax (“salmon”), Icelandic lax (“salmon”), Lithuanian lašišà (“salmon”), Latvian lasis, Russian лосо́сь (losósʹ, “salmon”), Albanian leshterik (“eel-grass”). Doublet of lox.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Latin laxus (“wide, roomy, loose”).

Etymology 3

By replacement of the syllable crosse with the cross-shaped letter x.

Etymology 4

From the IATA airport code.

See also for "lax"

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