lapse
Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
lapse/laps/
▶noun
- 1 a brief failure of concentration, memory, or judgement.
■ a decline from previously high standards.
- 2 an interval of time.
- 3 Law the termination of a right or privilege through disuse or failure to follow appropriate procedures.
- 1 (of a right, privilege, or agreement) become invalid because it is not used, claimed, or renewed.
- 2 cease to follow the rules and practices of a religion or doctrine.
- 3 (lapse into) pass gradually into (a different, often worse, state or condition).
– origin ME: from L. lapsus, from labi ‘to slip or fall’.
'lapse' also found in these Oxford entries:
aberration
- fall
- imprescriptible
- lapse rate
- reimpose
- sink
- statute-barred
- thirty-year rule
- time-lapse
