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lax

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Pronunciation

lax1 salmon

Etymology

The salmon is inherited from Middle English lax, also lex,[2] inherited from Old English leax, also læx and lex,[3][2][4] from Proto-Germanic *lahsaz.[5][6] It is cognate with Old High German lahs, German Lachs, Old Norse lax, Swedish lax and Danish laks,[5][4][7] and outside Germanic with Lithuanian lašiša and Latvian lasis, all meaning salmon, and with Tocharian B laks (“fish”).[5][7][6][8] Hoad thinks the Old English word died out and that the Scandinavian word, taken over in the 13th century, stayed in local use until the 17th;[9] the OED and Etymonline say it survived only in the north and in Scotland, and Merriam-Webster takes the modern word partly from Norwegian laks.[5][10][8] The same Germanic word gave lox through Yiddish.[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A salmon: the Old English word is recorded before 800, in the Corpus Glossary.[5][4] In Middle English it occurs as lex in a gloss of about 1225 and as lax in Havelok (about 1300), and also in surnames and place names;[2] Barnhart notes the place name Lexemer (1187).[2][4]

Semantic evolution

Once the ordinary word for the fish, it gave way to salmon and was later used mainly of a Scandinavian or Scottish salmon.[5][10][11] In Scotland a lax-fisher was a salmon fisher, and in Shetland a laksi-gert was a salmon weir.[12]

Timeline

  • before 800 – Old English leax, læx, a salmon.[4][5]
  • 1187 – in the place name Lexemer.[4]
  • c. 1300 – lax, in Havelok.[2][4]
  • 1722 – lax-fishers, salmon fishers, in Aberdeenshire.[12]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (rare) A salmon, especially one from Norway or Sweden.[11][8][5]

lax2 loose, not strict

Etymology

The adjective is borrowed from Latin laxus (“wide, loose, open”),[10][4][13][5][11] from a suffixed form of Proto-Indo-European *sleg- (“to be slack, be languid”).[10][13][4] The Latin word is related to langueō (“to be faint, languish”),[5][4][7][14] and is probably cognate with the Germanic adjective that gave slack.[5][11][15] The verb, now rare, is borrowed from Latin laxō (“to loosen”), from the same adjective.[5][8][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Loose or open: Barnhart dates the word to 1373.[16][4] The OED's first record, from Mandeville's Travels of about 1400, is of the bowels, acting easily or loose,[5][17][10] and the verb, to loosen or purge, is recorded before 1398 in Trevisa.[5]

Semantic evolution

From the bowels the word spread to anything slack or loosely held.[5] About 1450 it was first used of rules, discipline and conduct that are not strict,[5][10][4] the sense that is now most common.[18][19] In the 17th century it was used of loose tissue or soil (1615), loose clothes (1621) and anything not taut (1660),[5] and Milton wrote Inhabit lax, ye pow'rs of heav'n! (1667) in the Latin sense "with plenty of room".[5][20] Botanists used it from 1796 of loosely arranged flower clusters,[5] and phoneticians from 1909 of vowels spoken with relaxed muscles, the opposite of tense.[5][18] A noun lax, looseness of the bowels, was used from about 1529;[5][11] by the 19th century it survived, also as lask, in Scotland and in dialects from Yorkshire and Lancashire to Lincolnshire, Suffolk and Somerset, especially of scouring in cattle.[12][8]

Timeline

  • 1373 – loose, open.[4]
  • before 1398 – verb, to loosen, relax, purge (obsolete by 1685).[5]
  • c. 1400 – of the bowels, loose.[5][10]
  • c. 1450 – of rules or conduct, not strict.[5][4]
  • c. 1529 – noun, looseness of the bowels.[5]
  • 1615 – of tissue or soil, loosely compacted.[5]
  • 1660 – slack, not tense.[5]
  • 1796 – in botany, of loosely arranged parts.[5]
  • 1909 – in phonetics, of a vowel spoken with relaxed muscles.[5]
  • 1968 – verb, in phonetics, to make a vowel lax.[5]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Not strict, firm or careful enough; negligent: Checks at the warehouse had become lax.[19][8][18]
  2. Not taut or rigid; slack or relaxed.[19][8][5]
  3. Not exact or precise; vague.[19][5]
  4. Of the bowels: loose, acting easily.[8][5][21]
  5. (phonetics) Of a speech sound, especially a vowel: produced with the speech muscles relaxed.[19][18][5]
  6. (botany) Of a flower cluster: loose and open, with its parts spaced apart.[19][5]

Noun

  1. (dialect) Looseness of the bowels; diarrhoea.[8][5][12]

Verb

  1. (phonetics) To pronounce a vowel with the speech muscles relaxed.[5][11]
  2. (obsolete except in Scots) To loosen or relax.[11][5][8]

Word family

  • laxly
  • laxness
  • overlax
  • laxism
  • laxist

lax3 lacrosse

Etymology

The game is a clipping from English lacrosse, with the letter x standing for the ending, read as if it were the word cross.[5][8][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lacrosse: 1951, in E. Taylor's Game of Hide-and-seek.[5][8][10]

Timeline

Meanings

Noun

  1. (informal) Lacrosse.[8][11][5]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  3. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  12. ^ a b c d Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  13. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  15. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  16. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  17. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  18. ^ a b c d Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  19. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  20. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  21. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers