Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A barrel stave.
- noun A strip, as of wood, that forms a part of the covering for a cylindrical object.
- transitive verb To furnish or cover with lags.
- intransitive verb To fail to keep up a pace; straggle.
- intransitive verb To proceed or develop with comparative slowness.
- intransitive verb To weaken or slacken; flag.
- intransitive verb Games To determine the order of play by hitting or shooting a ball toward a mark, as in marbles or billiards, with the player whose ball stops closest to the mark going first.
- intransitive verb To fail to keep up with (another).
- intransitive verb To proceed or develop at a slower pace than (another).
- intransitive verb Sports In golf, to hit (a putt) so that it stops a short way from the hole and can then be tapped in.
- noun An interval between one event or phenomenon and another.
- noun A condition of weakness or slackening.
- transitive verb To arrest.
- transitive verb To send to prison.
- noun A convict.
- noun An ex-convict.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To move slowly; fall behind; hang back; loiter; linger.
- To slacken.
- To clothe, as a steam-boiler, to prevent radiation of heat.
- To bring into the hands of justice; cause to be punished for a crime.
- To take; steal.
- Slow; tardy; late; coming after or behind.
- Long delayed; last.
- noun One who or that which comes behind; the last comer; one who hangs back.
- noun The lowest class; the rump; the fag-end.
- noun In mech., the amount of retardation of some movement: as, the lag of the valve of a steam-engine.
- noun In machinery, one of the strips which form the periphery of a wooden drum, the casing of a carding-machine, or the lagging or covering of a steam-boiler or-cylinder.
- noun An old convict.
- noun A term of hard labor or transportation.
- noun In electricity, the displacement of phase of an electric wave back, or behind (in time), to another electric wave: used mainly with regard to alternating-current circuits.
- noun See
lagging of the tides , under lagging. - noun The angle corresponding to the lag of the tides; the hour-angle between the lunar transit and the flood-tide; the shifting of the earth's magnetic system from a symmetrical distribution about the noon meridian into the observed eccentric position.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective obsolete Coming tardily after or behind; slow; tardy.
- adjective Last; long-delayed; -- obsolete, except in the phrase
lag end . - adjective obsolete Last made; hence, made of refuse; inferior.
- noun Slang, Eng. One transported for a crime.
- intransitive verb To walk or more slowly; to stay or fall behind; to linger or loiter.
- transitive verb obsolete To cause to lag; to slacken.
- transitive verb (Mach.) To cover, as the cylinder of a steam engine, with lags. See
Lag , n., 4. - noun obsolete One who lags; that which comes in last.
- noun The fag-end; the rump; hence, the lowest class.
- noun The amount of retardation of anything, as of a valve in a steam engine, in opening or closing.
- noun (Mach.) A stave of a cask, drum, etc.
- noun (Zoöl.) See
Graylag . - noun The failing behind or retardation of one phenomenon with respect to another to which it is closely related.
- noun the interval by which the time of high water falls behind the mean time, in the first and third quarters of the moon; -- opposed to
priming of the tide, or the acceleration of the time of high water, in the second and fourth quarters; depending on the relative positions of the sun and moon. - noun an iron bolt with a square head, a sharp-edged thread, and a sharp point, adapted for screwing into wood; a screw for fastening lags.
- transitive verb Slang, Eng. To transport for crime.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
late - noun countable A gap, a delay; an
interval created by something not keeping up; alatency .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word lag.
Examples
-
You want to let it lag along, and _lag_ along, and see 'f something won't happen to get you out of it!
-
Ironically, the only main economic indicator that has continued to lag is unemployment.
-
“That four-year lag is where the music industry lost the battle,” said Sonal Gandhi, music analyst with Forrester Research.
-
“That four-year lag is where the music industry lost the battle,” said Sonal Gandhi, music analyst with Forrester Research.
-
That lag is perfectly congruent with his theory that the bigger part of the crash came when overly restrictive monetary policy turned a manageable bubble pop into the end of the world as we know it.
-
This popularity lag is probably the source of the modern concern that “for a moment” is the more original, more pure sense, and “in a moment” the interloper.
-
The built-in lag in adjusting home assessments has become a government policymakers dream: It is a counter-cyclical tax that can generate more revenue in bad times, raising collections at a time when other economically sensitive taxes falter.
-
This popularity lag is probably the source of the modern concern that “for a moment” is the more original, more pure sense, and “in a moment” the interloper.
-
The impact lag is the time between when the action is taken and when the effect of the action is felt.
-
The impact lag is the time between when the action is taken and when the effect of the action is felt.
oroboros commented on the word lag
Contronymic in the sense: fall behind vs. advance (as a putt or coin).
January 27, 2007
oroboros commented on the word lag
Gal in reverse.
November 3, 2007