Lapse

n. [Lat. lapsus, from labi, lapsus, to slide, to fall; Fr. laps, Sp. lapso.]

1Sense 1. A gliding, slipping, or gradual falling; an easy and almost imperceptible descent; an unobserved progress or passing away; as, the lapse of a stream, or of time.

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

Bacon was content to wait the lapse of centuries for his expected revenue of fame. I. Taylor.

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

This scripture may be usefully applied as a caution to guard against those lapses and failings to which our infirmities daily expose us. Rogers.

3Sense 3. (Eccl. 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.

4Sense 4. (Theol.) (a.) The fall or apostasy of Adam. (b.) An extraordinary, but not miraculous, influence of the Holy Spirit.

A popular ecclesiastical historian of the last century . . . has resorted to the hypothesis that there have been certain lapses of the Spirit in different periods, like in their principle, though not in their outward tokens, to that of which Whitsuntide reminds us. F. D. Maurice.

v. i. [imp. & p. p. LAPSED (lāpst); p. pr. & vb. n. LAPSING.] [From the noun.]

1Sense 1. To pass slowly, silently, or by degrees; to glide.

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. Swift.

2Sense 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.

To lapse in fullness Is sorer than to lie for need. Shak.

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

3Sense 3. To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, by the omission, negligence, or failure of some one, as a patron, a legatee, &c.

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

4Sense 4. (Law.) To become ineffectual or void; to fall.

Lapsed devise, or lapsed legacy (Law), a devise, or legacy, which fails or takes no effect, in consequence of the death of the devisee or legatee before that of the testator, or for other cause. Wharton.