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Lax   /læks/   Listen
Lax

adjective
(compar. laxer; superl. laxest)
1.
Lacking in rigor or strictness.  Synonym: slack.  "Lax in attending classes" , "Slack in maintaining discipline"
2.
Pronounced with muscles of the tongue and jaw relatively relaxed (e.g., the vowel sound in 'bet').
3.
Lacking in strength or firmness or resilience.  "A limp handshake"
4.
Emptying easily or excessively.  Synonym: loose.



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"Lax" Quotes from Famous Books



... than in most others we believe, and there is a reason to be found for it in the migratory habits of the people, and in the general looseness in all the ties that connect men with the past. The laws on the subject of matrimony, moreover, are so very lax, intercourse is so simple and has so many facilities, and the young of the two sexes are left so much to themselves, that it is no wonder children form that connection so often without reflection and contrary to the wishes of their friends. Still, the law of God is there, and we ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... Anarchy and brigandage were rife. The people were ignorant and poor, and the chief posts about the cathedral, including even the deanery, were held by Italian absentees appointed by the Pope. The ecclesiastical discipline was naturally very lax. Thoresby drew up his famous Catechism, which was translated into English verse, in 1357, and set to work to abolish the abuses caused by pluralism and immorality among the clergy. The question of precedence was settled by Innocent VI., who determined that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock

... poor; gold and silver, robes and jewels, fine armor and horses, hawks and hounds—even fine new ships, were bestowed by him, from the wealth of the old merchant Gilbert, as well as from the revenues of his archdeaconry, and of several other benefices, which the lax opinions of his time caused him to think no shame to ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... only cause him great annoyance, but even put his life in danger, and accordingly the rascals who engaged in this form of crime ranked as the worst of all and received no mercy when they were caught. If the sheriff of the region was lax, the settlers took the matter into their own hands, enrolled themselves as vigilantes, hunted the thieves down, hanged those whom they captured, and shot at sight those who tried to escape. It happened that the sheriff, in whose jurisdiction ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... servants of the people who has betrayed his fellow countrymen, is ex-Attorney General Lax. It was his masterful policy of inaction that permitted the trusts and monopolies to intrench themselves during the four years that he stood as their buffer, against all efforts of the several states to ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... care as the rest, that is, with no care at all." His genius flowed free in its own unconscious abundance: where conscious deliberate workmanship was needed, "the forthright craftsman's hand," there alone he was lax and irresponsible. In Shakspeare's case we can often account for similar incongruities by the constraint of the old plot which he was using; but Scott was making his own plots, or letting them make ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... had poor Mr Lennard been so perplexed and troubled. He was invited to reconsider opinions which he had held, in a somewhat lax fashion it may be granted, all his life. He had to search for his son, and prevent him if possible from becoming a slave to the system he had just heard so strongly denounced, and he was painfully anxious about the health of his dear little Mary. ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... some states (notably those of New England and New York), under careful regulation and held to strict standards by public sentiment, for the most part maintained a high credit; but many banks, under lax laws and regulations, were guilty of great abuses of credit and of downright dishonest practices. The evils were more especially evident in connection with excessive issues of ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... ward's welfare in solemn conclave. There was a division of opinion. Some of them saw no harm; others, more strait-laced, held that it was scarcely correct that a Roman whose principles, doubtless, were lax, should be allowed to sit to the lady whom they fondly called their child. Indeed, it seemed dubious whether the leave would be given, until a curator, with more worldly wisdom than the rest, suggested that as the captain ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... asks me to believe that the immortality which Christianity promised Heathen—such an immortality —was another of things which tended to give it success;—on the one hand, a menace of retribution, not for flagrant crimes only, which Heathenism itself punished, nor for the lax manners which the easy spirit of Paganism had made venial but for spiritual vices, of which it took account, some of which it had even consecrated virtues; and, on the other hand, an other of a which promised nothing but delights of a spiritual order; a paradise ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... him groan when the bleared eyes saw that instead of water there was but blazing hot sand. The Indian made no other sound but merely rolled over on his back and lay very still, eyes shut, jaw dropping, hands lax at ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... would make human life intolerable. It is, moreover, false, when so put, as we shall presently prove. Take the easy course, and leave the obligation out of count? This principle is more nearly correct than the other: but it needs interpretation, else it may prove dangerously lax. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... regions, the taxation of forest lands has been excessive and has led to waste by forcing the destructive logging of mature forests, as well as through the abandonment of cut-over lands for taxes. That this has not been even more general is due to under-assessment, to lax administration of the law, but to no virtue in the law itself. Already taxes upon forest lands are being increased by the strict enforcement of the tax laws. Even where this has not yet been done, the fear that it will be done is a bar ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... him. He behaved to her with a kind of mournful courtesy and kindness remarkable in one of his blunt ways and ordinary rough manner. He called her by her Christian name often and fondly, was very soft and gentle with the children, especially with the boy, whom he did not love, and being lax about church generally, he went thither and performed all the offices (down even to listening to Doctor Tusher's ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... necessity of evading it threw the Japanese approach into a confusion from which it was unable to recover entirely, and the attack lost its essential momentum and cohesion. Again, defective as were the arrangements in the squadron itself, and lax as were its training and discipline, no torpedo hits were made, so far as we can judge, after the Russian guns and searchlights ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... or wrong of these comparative methods of training, Germans trained in the investigation of such matters agree in telling me that the boys who come up to the universities, especially in the large cities and towns, are somewhat lax in their moral standards as regards matters upon which the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... Gallicans, and not a few of the doctors of the Sorbonne, though divided on nearly every other issue, made common cause against the Society. They were assisted in their campaign by Madame de Pompadour, the king's mistress, for whom the Jesuit theology was not sufficiently lax, and by the Duc de Choiseul, the king's prime minister. The well-known Jesuit leanings of Louis XV. and of the royal family generally, imposed a certain measure of restraint upon the enemies of the Society, until the famous La Valette law ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... what is done in this Terrestriall starre The same is done in every Orb beside. Each flaming Circle that we see from farre Is but a knot in Psyches garment tide. From that lax shadow cast throughout the wide And endlesse world, that low'st projection Of universall life each thing's deriv'd What e're appeareth in corporeall fashion; For body's but this spirit, fixt, ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... full sweet and right delicious, and more sweet than honey or sugar. And it cometh of the dew of heaven that falleth upon the herbs in that country. And it congealeth and becometh all white and sweet. And men put it in medicines for rich men to make the womb lax, and to purge evil blood. For it cleanseth the blood and putteth out melancholy. This land of Job marcheth to ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown

... other topics. I must see him. Could I but tell him all I think! This door, whither leads it? Hah! methinks I do remember yon glittering gallery! No one in attendance. The discipline of our palace is somewhat lax. My warriors are no courtiers. What an admirable marshal of the palace Honain would make! Silence everywhere. So! 'tis well. These saloons I have clearly passed through before. Could I but reach the private portal by the river side, unseen or undetected! ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... two for dealing with inferior races and new countries. Their virtues were courage, energy, alertness, inventiveness, generosity, honesty, truth-speaking; their commonest faults were violence, combativeness, lax ways in business, intemperance, narrowness of mind. They hated foreigners and Indians, and were ready to fight any one who behaved like an enemy or a critic; they held in honor women, their country, and brave men. ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown

... writer of the burlesque, born, of good parentage, in Paris; entered the Church, and was for some years somewhat lax-living abbe of Mans, but stricken with incurable disease settled in Paris, and supported himself by writing; is chiefly remembered for his "Virgile Travesti" and "Le Roman Comique," which "gave the impulse out of which sprang the masterpieces of Le Sage, Defoe, Fielding, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... own. Kemble objecting to stiffness, Munden to grimace, and so on. His representation of Incledon was extraordinary: his nose seemed actually to become aquiline. It is a pity I can not put upon paper, as represented by Mr. Mathews, the singular gabblings of that actor, the lax and sailor-like twist of mind, with which every thing hung upon him; and his profane pieties in quoting the Bible; for which, and swearing, he seemed to have an ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... was of little use; then not even themselves escaped being ill-treated; particularly in the latter months, when injustice was committed through the combinations among the more powerful, and the vigour of every magistracy becomes considerably more lax in the latter part of the year; and now the commons placed hopes in the tribuneship, only on the condition that they had tribunes like Icilius; that for the last two years they had had only mere names. On the other hand, the elder members of the patrician order, though they ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... which the money should be raised; and so no assistance was furnished to Washington from that quarter. The youthful commander had here a foretaste, in these his incipient campaigns, of the perils and perplexities which awaited him from enemies in the field, and lax friends in legislative councils in the grander operations of his future years. Before setting off for Redstone Creek, he discharged Trent's refractory men from his detachment, ordering them to await Colonel Fry's commands; they however, in the true ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this, too, after the witty cool philosophising that precedes. The act itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart, when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... And then perhaps a stray cynic would say, "But Angela Sovrani need not depend on one lover surely?—" and he would get for answer, "No, she need not—but it so happens that she does,"—which to everybody seemed extraordinary, more particularly in Italy, where morals are so lax, that a woman has only to be seen walking alone in the public gardens or streets with one of the opposite sex, and her reputation is gone for ever. It is no use to explain that the man in question is her father, her brother or her uncle,—he simply could ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... without knowledge of the viands, and drinking a bottle of claret in like unconsciousness, he smoked for half an hour, his eyes vacantly set, his limbs lax and heavy, as though in the torpor of difficult digestion. When the cigar was finished, he roused himself, looked at the time, and asked for a railway guide. There was a train to Wimbledon at ten minutes ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... when—suddenly a sharp crack like a pistol shot cut the air. The music ceased—one of the violin strings had snapped. At another time the great man would have finished the number on the three remaining strings, but the heat, the lax practice of a holiday season—something, or perhaps everything combined, for the instant overcame him. He stood like an awkward child, gazing down at ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... walled towns they still remained invisible. Their minds, restricted to puerilities, had never grown up. Their bodies were so lax that their short weekly promenade to the cemetery exhausted them. Seated on cushions, they spent their time listening to cuckoo clocks and music boxes, smelling perfumes, putting their jewelry away in caskets, then bedizening themselves all over again. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... justice to the Georgian group; but it may give a hint of what the Bible meant even at that period, the period when its grip on men was most lax in all the later ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... be perfectly pure; all of which had been strictly practised by her, like sacred rites or superstitious observances upon the exact performance of which good fortune depends. In such matters she now became lax. And, besides the care of her person, she neglected the care of her clothes, which had been so beneficial to her mind; for it must be remembered that it was during those long hours of meditation, while she sat sewing, that her reading had been digested, her knowledge assimilated, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... followed in the wake of the inspector, who on hearing the news, hurriedly walked towards the police station. Here they found that the news was true. The constable left in charge of the office was greatly agitated, as it seemed he had been lax in doing his duty. But he made ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... commander-in-chief lacks insight, force and determination, the discipline of the army will be lax and its efficiency greatly impaired. If he is a craven, without faith in himself and in the cause he represents, his lack of courage, his doubt and indecision will communicate themselves to the whole army, resulting in discouragement ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... increased rapidly towards two o'clock (92 and 93 Fahr.), by which time every voice of bird or mammal was hushed; only in the trees was heard at intervals the harsh whirr of a cicada. The leaves, which were so moist and fresh in early morning, now become lax and drooping; the flowers shed their petals. Our neighbours, the Indian and Mulatto inhabitants of the open palm- thatched huts, as we returned home fatigued with our ramble, were either asleep in their hammocks or seated on mats in the shade, too languid even ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... discontent was still further increased by the wasteful and lax use of public funds. The money which was wrung from the poor people by these unequal taxes, was seldom wisely or economically expended. Much was squandered upon foolish projects, costly in the extreme, and impossible of accomplishment. Such was the attempt ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... both religious men; and although Mac was blue Presbyterian and an inveterate theologian, somehow, out here in the wilderness, it was more possible to forgive a man for illusions about the Apostolic Succession and mistaken views upon Church government. The Colonel, at all events, was not so lax but what he was ready to back up the Calvinist in an endeavour to keep the Sabbath (with a careful compromise between church and chapel) and help him to conduct ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... observed. I was formerly accustomed to think, that I could not limit the time for my recitations without great inconvenience, and occasionally allowed one exercise to encroach upon the succeeding, and this upon the next, and thus sometimes the last was excluded altogether. But such a lax and irregular method of procedure is ruinous to the discipline of a school. On perceiving it, at last, I put the bell into the hands of a pupil, commissioning her to ring regularly, having, myself, fixed the times, saying that I would ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... Moray," said he, "that I have been indifferent to your fate, but you can not guess how strong the feeling is against you, how obdurate is the Governor, who, if he should appear lax in dealing with you, would give a weapon into Bigot's hands which might ruin him in France one day. I have but this moment come from the Governor, and there seems ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the young woman, who brought him some billet appointing a meeting, a gold chain, or a diamond. We have observed that young cavaliers received presents from their king without shame. Let us add that in these times of lax morality they had no more delicacy with respect to the mistresses; and that the latter almost always left them valuable and durable remembrances, as if they essayed to conquer the fragility of their sentiments by the solidity of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... popular approval, since he was chosen praetor for 198 without the usual interval. The province of Sardinia was entrusted to him, and he strained every nerve to make his government present as strong a contrast as possible with the lax and corrupt administration of the nobles who took Scipio for their pattern. The troops were sternly disciplined, and law-breakers of every kind severely dealt with; in money matters the strictest economy prevailed; all gifts from provincials to Roman officers were forbidden. The praetor, the ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... right of being paid the amount of his claim, till after the Theatre should be built, was also a subject of much acrimonious discussion between the two friends,—Sheridan applying to this condition that sort of lax interpretation, which would have left him the credit of the sacrifice without its inconvenience, and Whitbread, with a firmness of grasp, to which, unluckily, the other had been unaccustomed in business, holding ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... was so scattered through the forests, and the discipline of some of the divisions was so lax that it was some days before McClellan had them ranged in order on the Chickahominy. Another week elapsed before he was in a position to undertake fresh operations; but General Johnston had now four divisions on the spot, and ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... effect the director of his church throughout Lower Saxony. His tact was equal to his learning. In conjunction with Andrea and Selnecker he induced the Lutherans of Saxony and Swabia to adopt the Formula Concordiae and so become one body. Against lax views of Socinian tendency he directed his able treatise De duabus naluris in Christo (1570). Resigning office in infirm health (1584) he survived till the 8th ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... 26th of the same month he censured the princes and ministers who were lax in reporting upon this edict, and ordered them to do so at once, and it was not long until a favourable report was given and, for the first time in the history of the empire, a great university was launched by the government, destined, may we not hope, to accomplish the end the ambitious ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... say, and do say. My dear Dora, unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice—which we are not—even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so—which we don't—I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We are positively ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... of physical and moral deterioration. The addition of 1,400 negroes from the South, over 70 per cent of whom were brought to the city by companies seeking labor, hastened the deterioration and gave rise to problems where only tendencies existed before. Neighborhood life is conspicuously lax and the spirit of the community quite naturally comports with the looseness and immorality of the district. Though such conditions are plainly evident, no organized influence has been projected to correct them. As with the neighborhood, so with ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... load standing out at an angle, and the two lads stood watching the serpent's head as the jaws parted once or twice and then became motionless, while the folds twisted round the stout ash-handle gradually grew lax and then dropped limply and loosely upon the earth, ending by heaving slightly as a shudder seemed to run from the bleeding neck right ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... of it soon enough," promised the other. She crossed to the piano. "What kind of music do you want? No; don't tell me. I should be able to guess." Half turning on the bench she gazed speculatively at the lax figure on the rug. "Chopin, I think. I've guessed right? Well, I don't think I shall play you Chopin to-day. You don't ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... picket stationed there. Its object was to challenge all passers-by during the dark hours, and it formed part of the scheme already elaborated by the authorities for a complete search of every foot of ground. But Brazilian soldiers are apt to be lax in such matters. These men were all lying down, and smoking. For a marvel, they happened to be silent when Marcel led his cohort into the open road. They were listening, in fact, to the crackling ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... best government in the state. The chief reason, perhaps, why we have them not, is that the people have not been in touch with the executive department. The people have known nothing of what was going on at City Hall. Now and then, we have attempted to lift the veil, but we all have been lax and easily turned aside. We confess it with shame; but we promise, as for this newspaper, to do better; and we publicly declare ourselves this morning as in sympathy with the new Reform Club. From now ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... expelled from the House. Whether any further punishment could be inflicted on him was a perplexing question. The English law touching forgery became, at a later period, barbarously severe; but, in 1698, it was absurdly lax. The prisoner's offence was certainly not a felony; and lawyers apprehended that there would be much difficulty in convicting him even of a misdemeanour. But a recent precedent was fresh in the minds of all men. The weapon which had reached Fenwick might reach Duncombe. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... used as daughters or auxiliaries to the large convents, were especially apt to fall into a lax state, and in truth the little priory of Greystone, with its half-dozen of Sisters, had been placed under the care of the Lady Agnes Selby because she was too highly connected to be dealt with sharply, and too turbulent and unmanageable for the soberminded house at York. So ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Japanese morality I can say little. Their ideas on the subject are, to put it mildly, somewhat lax, and would no doubt shock any one strongly imbued with morality as it is in vogue (theoretically) in European countries. That there is not that privacy between the sexes which prevails in other countries may be indicated by the fact that men and women make ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... Arminians of being more lax than Papists, and of filling the soul of man with vilest arrogance and confidence in good works; while the Arminians complained that the God of the Gomarites was an unjust God, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... has been condemned for a passage which, to my taste, is the best in the whole piece. Cicero takes upon himself to palliate the pleasures of youth, and we are told that a man so grave, so pure, so excellent in his own life, should not have condescended to utter sentiments so lax in defence of so immoral a young friend. I will endeavor to translate a portion of the passage, and I think that any ladies who may read these pages will agree with me in liking Cicero the better for what he said upon the ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... the world, but if you love her, you will do it! I would like to see this work done by trained motherly and tactful women, in the department of social welfare, paid by the school board. I know the mothers should do it, but many mothers are ignorant, foolish, lax, and certainly untrained. The mother's kindly counsel is the best, I know, but you cannot always rely upon its being there. This is coming, too, for public sentiment is being awakened to ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... thoroughly identified with the State which he had served with distinction both in her own Legislature and in Congress. He had the reputation of being somewhat unscrupulous as to political methods, somewhat careless in personal conduct, somewhat lax in personal morals; but to the one great object of his life, the destruction of slavery and the elevation of the slave, he was supremely devoted. From the pursuit of that object nothing could deflect him. Upon no phase of it would he listen to compromise. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... "Frolics with the Hutchinsons," it was necessary to hunt him up, from public-house to public-house, early in the morning. It is because these things are universally known,—because he was seen staggering in the road, and spoken of by drivers and lax artisans as an alehouse comrade, that I speak of him here, in order that I may testify how he was beloved and cherished by the best people in his neighborhood. I can hardly speak of him myself as a personal acquaintance; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... [3] Diaz is very lax in his topographical notices of this famous expedition. The settlement of St Gil de Buena Vista, where Cortes now was, appears to have been at the bottom of the gulf of Amatique in the bay of Honduras, on the east ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... at Westville Seminary had been shockingly lax since the long illness of the principal had left the easy-going first assistant teacher at the head of affairs. The girls ran all over the rules,—had private theatricals, suppers, and games of all sorts in ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... Dorset had travelled; and when made a gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles II., he was not unlike his sovereign in other traits; so full of gaiety, so high-bred, so lax, so courteous, so convivial, that no supper was complete without him: no circle 'the right thing,' unless Buckhurst, as he was long called, was there to pass the bottle round, and to keep every one in good-humour. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... notoriously lax in the administration of law, and the enforcement of an unpopular measure was resented equally by the president of a large manufacturing concern and by the former victim of a sweatshop who had started a place of his own. Whatever the sentiments toward the new law on ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... engulf the Aryan world. They were repulsed by the still sturdy Franks under their great leader, Charles Martel, at Tours. The battle of Tours[13] was only less momentous to the human race than that of Chalons. What the Arab domination of Europe would have meant we can partly guess by looking at the lax and lawless states of Northern Africa to-day. These fair lands, under both Roman and Vandal, had long been sharing the lot of Aryan Europe; they seemed destined to follow in its growth and fortune. But the Arab conquest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... must be considerable, then. Do you suppose a water-wave is like a harp-string? Vibration is the movement of a body in a state of tension,—undulation, that of a body absolutely lax. In vibration, not an atom of the body changes its place in relation to another,—in undulation, not an atom of the body remains in the same place with regard to another. In vibration, every particle of the body ignores gravitation, or defies it,—in undulation, every particle of the body ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... grand dignitaries of the Chamber of Peers had a Caroline, as lax as Carolines usually are. The name is an auspicious one for women. This dignitary, extremely old at the time, was on one side of the fireplace, and Caroline on the other. Caroline was hard upon the lustrum ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... were slack, and in those moments of life which called for a sudden decision, they wore the helpless bewilderment of a woman who has never been required to think for herself. Her grasp on practical matters was rendered the more lax, too, by her being an immoderate reader, who fed on novels from morning till night, and slept with a page turned down beside her bed. She was for ever lost in the joys or sorrows of some fictitious person, and, in consequence, remained for the most part completely ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... soon, we begin to hear of Roman governors who, when put in charge of conquered states, used their offices only to plunder the helpless inhabitants and to return to Rome after their terms were finished, laden with ill-gotten gains. Roman morals, which formerly were very strict, began to grow more lax, and in general the Roman civilization ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... are several religious men who have wanted an excuse for a long time to rat," said Mr Tadpole. "We must get Sir Robert to make some kind of a religious move, and that will secure Sir Litany Lax and young Mr Salem." ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... been feeding you on all these generalities just to kill time. A generality would be worth nothing if it weren't for its exceptions. Women are remarkable for the number of their exceptions. You are crossing a threshold into a peculiarly lax section and age of woman. I want you to believe and to remember that the world still breeds ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... injury, from time to time, as the stool passes the diseased region. Just under the mucous membrane covering the anal columns and semilunar valves is the fatty tissue forming a bed upon which the mucous membrane rests. It is sufficiently lax to permit considerable movement of the mucous membrane on the muscular coat beneath it. The frail, fatty, loose connective tissue in the grasp of the sphincter muscles would be the first to become impaired by inflammatory process, the product of which finds its way down and out under the mucous membrane ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... presented itself for the new order to show where it stood in the matter of accepting doubtful characters on an equal social footing. It had properly vindicated itself of the charge that western society was lax in such matters. That they had hurt—terribly hurt—another, was ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... invade or defend; and yet Spain, at the time I am writing this, is looking forward to armed assistance from Portugal. May the Lord in his mercy grant that the soldiers who proceed to her assistance may be of a different stamp: and yet, from the lax state of discipline which exists in the Portuguese army, in comparison with that of England and France, I am afraid that the inoffensive population of the disturbed provinces will say that wolves have been summoned to chase away foxes from the sheepfold. O! may I live to see the day when soldiery ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... was also weakened by the practice of electing very old men to the post, as the short tenure of the office and the feebleness of its holder meant a lax control over the turbulent Knights. This practice became very common in the last two centuries of the Order's existence. But many of the Grand Masters, though over seventy at the time of election, disappointed expectation by living till eighty ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen

... fatalism, painted so beautifully in "Uncle Tom," came soon to breed, as all fatalistic faiths will, the sensualist side by side with the martyr. Under the lax moral life of the plantation, where marriage was a farce, laziness a virtue, and property a theft, a religion of resignation and submission degenerated easily, in less strenuous minds, into a philosophy of indulgence and crime. Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... square upon his feet, gave Barnabas his hand. But even in that moment Barnabas was conscious that the door had opened softly behind him, saw the light fade out of Barrymaine's eyes, felt the hand grow soft and lax, and turning about, beheld Mr. Chichester smiling at them ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... and I've got an appointment." Beaton rose too, and Fulkerson put the two books in his lax hands. "Take these along, Michelangelo Da Vinci, my friend, and put your multitudinous mind on them for about an hour, and let us hear from you to-morrow. We hang ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the land, if they can help it. Their fondness for hugging the coast was very noticeable to me, and, unused to the constant vigilance and care which a long sea voyage demands, their system of duty was very lax and careless. There were no proper watches; at nightfall the Ty Kong used quietly to lower about three reefs of the main-sail and the whole of the mizzen. All the crew would then go to their cabin, leaving ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... settlements he was already engaged in drawing up. At first, indeed, it had seemed that the marriage would not be legally binding—the marriage and divorce having both taken place in Kansas, where the marriage laws are particularly lax—and he seemed inclined to be hopeful; but as he informed himself about the particulars of the divorce his face became grave and graver. When at last Dare produced the copy of the marriage register, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... Palmer cussing Gideon's lax business methods: "Since you have been a missionary you don't know enough to top broom-corn. I told you to hold out everything on that hotel guy and you made him put up ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... country. Smoking is an old and venerable institution in this kingdom of ours, and dates far back beyond the introduction of tobacco to our shores. Long before Sir Walter Raleigh was thought of, there is reason to believe herbs and leaves of one kind or other—coltsfoot, yarrow, mouse-lax, sword-grass, dandelion, and other plants, and even dried cow-dung—were smoked for one ailment or other, and in some instances for relaxation and pleasure, and thus, no doubt, became habitually used. These are still, in some of our rural districts, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... Southwest Asian and Southeast Asian heroin and opium moving to Europe, Africa, and the US; transit stop for Nigerian couriers; concern as money-laundering site due to lax ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... little pot of water is hung, and after they have made some progress, they are inclosed in bamboo tubes, and so coaxed down to the ground. They are mere slender whip-cords before reaching the earth, where they root, remaining very lax for several months; but gradually, as they grow and swell to the size of cables, they tighten, and eventually become very tense. This is a curious phenomenon, and so rapid, that it appears to be due to the rooting part mechanically dragging down the aerial. The branch meanwhile continues ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... many things I took for facts,— Icarus and his conduct lax, And how he sealed his fate with ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... before the caste panchayat or committee, and if a divorced woman marries again, her first husband performs funeral and mourning ceremonies as if she were dead. In Gujarat the practice is much more lax and "divorce can be obtained almost to an indefinite extent. Before they finally settle down to wedded life most couples have more than once changed their partners." [120] But here also, before the change takes place, there must be a formal ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... seem somewhat lax. Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde

... superficial flexor (perforatus) is ruptured there is no change in the position of the foot but the fetlock joint is slightly lowered. The pathognomonic symptom is the lax tendon during weight bearing, which may be felt by palpation of the tendon along its course in ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... and effect have so long been convertible, that it is often difficult to know one from the other. The prevalence of brigandage demands measures on the part of the government compared with the severity of which martial law is lax and mild; and the crime which provokes these harsh measures has revived again from the disaffection which they produce. All authorities on the subject are agreed that brigandage finds its shield and support in the fears of the people, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... that direction were not subjected to the scrutiny that fell to the share of those travelling from it towards the West, or, rather, to the scrutiny ordained by the Government; for Wilding had more than one opportunity of observing how very lax and indifferent were the constables and tything-men—particularly in Somerset and Wiltshire—in the performance of this duty. Wayfarers were questioned as a matter of form, but in no case did Wilding hear ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... the sarcasm behind his suddenly lax mouth. He saw a first lieutenant's uniform, but it bulged aesthetically; and he saw a first lieutenant's cap and bar, but it sat rakishly on puffed-up ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll

... strong that no individual could bear to think of resigning this pleasing anxious being and proceeding to fall into dumb forgetfulness. Men saw their comrades stricken by some dark force that they could not understand. The strong limbs grew lax first, and then hopelessly stiff; the bright eye was dulled; and it soon became necessary to hide the inanimate thing under the soil. It was impossible for those who had the quick blood flowing in their veins to believe that a time would come when feeling would be known no more. This fierce ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... think, directed against this tendency. The agitation with which he once said that corruption had entered into his heart by means of a dream seems to me a proof of this. He took a tolerant view of the lapses of others, and of course the standard of the age was lax in this respect. But I have little doubt myself that here Johnson found himself often confronted with a sensuous tendency which he thought degrading, and which ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... unvaryingly nay, generally resort to no form of oath or imprecation to gain credence to their statements, for their truthfulness is seldom called in question—at least, where they are well known. But with those who are lax in their statements—who tell the truth or tell lies just as for the moment the one or the other appears to suit them best—the case is different. When they speak something strange or important, they find their veracity questioned, and require to place themselves ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... these articles contained material for a future explosion. It was impossible to comply with them fully, because on the one side a conviction of their justice or expediency was wanting, and on the other they were considered as far too lax in their requirements—because individual cases usually occurred in such a shape that their conditions were not applicable in every particular, and finally, because the embers of passion still glowed ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... supposed that any alteration of Shakspeare's text would be necessary, or would be allowed; as little is it to be supposed that Shakspeare would commence a play in his old-accustomed, various, and unequalled verse, and finish it in the easy, but somewhat lax and familiar, though not inharmonious numbers of a reverent disciple."—Tyas's Shakspeare, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various

... lacking attractiveness. Not so much pudgy as shapeless; he had been shapeless originally. His squat figure showed, to be sure, a certain hardiness and vigor gained in his outdoor life, but he had not even the rude grace of a stalwart manhood about him. He sank apologetically into a lax posture, even as he stood. His pale blue eyes lacked fire. His hair, uneven, ragged and hay-colored, seemed dry, as though hopeless, discouraged, done with life, fringing out as it did in gray locks under ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... the child, limp with sleep, from its crib, and began to dress it. Idella cried, and fought away the hands that tormented her, and made herself now very stiff and now very lax; but Annie and Mrs. Bolton together prevailed against her, and she was dressed, and had fallen asleep again in her clothes while the women were putting on their hats and sacks, and Bolton was driving up to the door with ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... name that touched Tancred, as it has all the youth of England, significant of a career that would rescue public life from that strange union of lax principles and contracted sympathies which now form the special and degrading features of British politics. It was borne by one whose boyhood we have painted amid the fields and schools of Eton, and the springtime of whose earliest youth we traced ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... help, and so far as he was concerned Georgia might have been wiped out. He indeed cared so little about it that when the governors of the other more northerly colonies wrote to Oglethorpe thanking and praising him he did not join with them. But much to his disgust, seeing their Governor so lax, some of the people of South Carolina themselves wrote to Oglethorpe to ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... who, across a gulf Of ceremony, views his Love, And dares not yet address herself, Pays worship to her stolen glove. The gulf o'erleapt, the lover wed, It happens oft, (let truth be told), The halo leaves the sacred head, Respect grows lax, and worship cold, And all love's May-day promising, Like song of birds before they pair, Or flush of flowers in boastful Spring, Dies out, and leaves the Summer bare. Yet should a man, it seems to me, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... exactly! That's why I was on the point of swearing. The boys down here are getting lax and I'm going to make trouble." Manton turned back and called to the boy outside. "Where ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... once started and got under way, the fathers of the Province assumed a vigilant oversight of its orthodoxy, but discharged with a lax and grudging service the responsibility of its maintenance. They ejected the first President, the protomartyr of American learning, the man who sacrificed more to the College than any one individual in the whole course of its history, on account of certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... founded on precisely the same principle, is the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest; then that of the English;[1] then that of the French (I speak as it used to be); and on board a Spanish ship, there is ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... meet the rigid requirements of their own belief; and they planned at once a Spanish crusade which was intended to improve the general deplorable condition of public morals and at the same time to modify, in a most radical way, the liturgy of the Spanish Church, which was far too lax in points of discipline. Their conduct at the time of the surrender of Toledo, in 1074, is a most excellent example of the eager, yet thoughtless, way in which they went about their new work. When King Alfonso, after an interval of more than three hundred years, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... when introduced in 1549, was to provide some corrective of the lax practice of the un-reformed Church in admission of unworthy persons to Communion. In this view, the Curate should be informed of the names of intending Communicants, in order that he may deal with the cases of scandal referred to in the second paragraph, and with the cases of enmity referred to ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown

... glided along with its witching gayeties, and, though the young Christian was never tempted to join the giddy multitude in their unlawful pastimes, yet his views were more lax than they had been. ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various

... What would the English have done if subjected to such treatment? The Dutchman is naturally slow to move, and very patient. He seems born to suffer and endure. But Martial Law imposed such heavy burdens upon him that he could not but resent them. Where the Boers were too lax in enforcing their Martial Law regulations, the English went to the other extreme in ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... Romanizer I have since discovered, should not have exercised more care in the supervision of his nephew, a fellow scholar with my own son at Haverton House. It appears that Mr. Lidderdale was so lax as to permit his nephew to frequent the services of the Reverend Stephen Ogilvie at Meade Cantorum, where every excess such as incense, lighted candles, mariolatry and creeping to the cross is openly practised. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... say that "it is too late to save the wild life"; for excepting the dead-and-gone species, that is not true. Let no man say that "we can not save the wild life by law"; for that is not true, either. As long as laws are lax, even law-abiding people will take ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... others, and then more at another point in the wall. It was a long lax line of men ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... parish highways will become of increased importance. There are 16,000 local authorities that have charge of these highways. There is a nominal surveyor to each parish—a surveyor who knows nothing about rates. Such a division of authority makes lax expenditure and bad management. An existing act of parliament authorizes the union of parishes for the management of highways; but the act is permissory—the union must be voluntary; and in very few cases has advantage been ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... failing, without a leaning to virtue's side, to which some collectors have been, by reputation at least, addicted—a propensity to obtain articles without value given for them—a tendency to be larcenish. It is the culmination, indeed, of a sort of lax morality apt to grow out of the habits and traditions of the class. Your true collector—not the man who follows the occupation as a mere expensive taste, and does not cater for himself—considers himself a finder or discoverer rather than a purchaser. He is an industrious prowler ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... also looked upon Greek philosophy as an invention of the devil. Irenaeus was more discriminating. He opposed the broad and lax charity of the Alexandrines, but he read the Greek philosophy, and when called to the bishopric of Lyons, he set himself to the study of the Gallic Druidism, believing that a special adaptation would be called for in that remote mission field.[30] Basil was an earnest advocate of the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... he was a careless man, he was a most careful one; it is not that he was a morally lax man, he was almost morbidly the reverse. Neither was he morose or eccentric in his motives or bearing; he was genial, conversational, and well-meaning. But he had some sort of blindness towards his fellow-men, so that he never entirely ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... still higher endeavor—you have been, poisoned by the tainted atmosphere of Atheism which is slowly and insidiously spreading itself through all ranks, particularly among the upper classes, who, while becoming every day more lax in their morals and more dissolute of behavior, consider themselves far too wise and 'highly cultured' to believe in anything. It is a most unwholesome atmosphere, charged with the morbidities and microbes ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... did there what people did everywhere else; they acknowledged by a present the trouble they gave, or the benefit they gained. It may be that Bacon's known difficulties about money, his expensive ways and love of pomp, his easiness of nature, his lax discipline over his servants, encouraged this profuseness of giving. And Bacon let it be. He asked no questions; he knew that he worked hard and well; he knew that it could go on without affecting his purpose to do justice "from ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... forget justice and mercy. If Jesus were to return, after all these centuries, and were only to do and say just what he did and said about the Sabbath when he was here before, there are many pious Protestants who would think him rather lax in his religious principles. How long he has been with us, and yet we have ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... sensible of this want of nature, and hence arose his predilection for the best poets of Greece and France. The German muse, led by his genius, lost her ancient stiffness and acquired a pliant grace, to which the sternest critic of his too lax morality is not insensible. Some lyric poets, connected with the Graecomanists by the Goettingen Hainbund, preserved a noble simplicity, more particularly Salis and Holty, and also Count Stolberg, wherever he has not been ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... the subject of the corn agitation, (obstinately pursued through the session,) we may remark—and we do so with pain—that all laws whatsoever, strong or lax, upon this question are to be regarded as provisional. The temper of society being what it is, some small gang of cotton-dealers, moved by the rankest self-interest, finding themselves suffered to agitate almost without opposition, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... Church was only just beginning. One of the earliest and most important tasks of his immediate disciples was the formation of the Carmelite nun Teresa, and her spiritual guidance in the unusual paths she was called to tread. Even in Catholic Spain hearts had grown cold and minds lax. The religious houses had long fallen from their first fervour. During the space of sixteen years St. Teresa founded seventeen convents, all following the original strict Carmelite rule. As early as 1474 Pope Eugenius IV. had formed the project of re-establishing the strict observance ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... rule, only went to his theatre towards eight o'clock, when the piece in favor came on, and overtures and accompaniments needed the strict ruling of the baton; most minor theatres are lax in such matters, and Pons felt the more at ease because he himself had been by no means grasping in all his dealings with the management; and Schmucke, if need be, could take his place. Time went by, and Schmucke ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... the restriction of public opinion in a well-ordered community, take from men the society of good women, and there will be a tendency to barbarism. A civilized army has indeed a code and public opinion of its own, which counts for some sterling qualities, but it is lax and ineffective for much that goes to complete manhood. Just as the war left a host of maimed and crippled, so it left a multitude of moral cripples. At the reunion, around the "camp fire," with the reminiscences ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... Constance. The council was called at the desire of the emperor Sigismund, by one of the three rival popes, John XXIII. The demand for a council had been far from welcome to Pope John, whose character and policy could ill bear investigation, even by prelates as lax in morals as were the churchmen of those times. He dared not, however, oppose the will ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... replied, "such an occurrence would be almost impossible; but you must remember that we are talking of the last century—a century in which, I regret to say, the clergy of the Church of England were sadly lax in the performance of their duties. The followers of Wesley and Whitefield could scarcely have multiplied as they did if the flocks had not been cruelly neglected by their proper shepherds. It was a period in which benefices were bestowed constantly on men obviously ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... and sulky, I don't intend to amuse you in the evenings. I was brought up on a stricter plan than the girls of the present day, and I mean while I am with you to bring you up in the same way. I prefer it to the lax way in which ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... change in the writings in which the revelation underlying it was enshrined. A later stadium of the evolution—which, of course, was never felt to be such—might naturally cause the free and easy views and lax practices which once were orthodox and universal to assume the odious form of heresy and impiety, and a laudable respect for the author of revelation was held to impose the sacred duty of bringing the documentary records of ancient practices into harmony with present ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... romances, in order to enjoy the delicious sensation of looking on as she withers under injustice into a premature coffin, and of watching her cruel parents as they water the grave of their victim with unavailing tears. A somewhat lax method of bringing up will have enabled her to read many trashy novels. Out of these she constructs an imaginary hero, all gushing tenderness and a tawny moustache. Having met a young man who fully realises her ideal in the latter particular, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various

... belly nearly reduced to its natural size, still made a prodigious quantity of water, his appetite very good, habit of body rather lax, and his complexion ruddy. On the 2d of June, being still rather weak, he was ordered decoct. cort. [Symbol: ounce]ii. ter de die; and on the 12th was discharged from this ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... leafy crown, and swings From side to side—so on his crest the wings Erect seemed shaking upwards, and to sag The spear's point, and the burden'd head to wag Before the stricken body felt the stroke, Or the strong knees grew lax, or the heart broke. Breathless they waited; then the failing man Stiffened anew his neck, and changed and wan Looked for the last time in the face of day, And seemed to dare the Gods such might to slay As this, the sanguine splendid thing he was, Withal now gray of ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... or oil-meal is the best. It is generally fed in the latter form. In some instances the oil-meal is put directly into the milk beginning with a heaping teaspoonful and gradually increasing the quantity. A too lax condition of the digestion would indicate that an excessive amount was being fed. Later the meal may be more conveniently fed when mixed with ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.

... Charged with sighs more light than laughter, faint and fair, Like a woodland lake's weak wavelets lightly lingering forward, Soft and listless as the slumber-stricken air. Be the sunshine bared or veiled, the sky superb or shrouded, Still the waters, lax and languid, chafed and foiled, Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded, Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled. Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary, Blown for ever back by ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... be blamed for this withering sterility, this dead-sea of ineptitude. There must be some form of literature found, loose and lax enough to express the Moral Idealism of the second-rate mind; and Poetic Drama ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... the country are interested in canning mountain trout and others live where there is an abundant supply of either fresh-water fish or salt-water fish. Heretofore we have been wasteful and lax about the fish supply. But as we have learned to can vegetables and meats so we are going to learn to can fish. Fish is really canned the same in every step after preparation as peas and corn ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... sugre; and it comethe of the dew of hevene that fallethe upon the herbes, in that contree; and it congelethe and becomethe alle white and swete: and men putten it in medicynes for rich men, to make the wombe lax, and to purge evylle blood: for it clensethe the blode, and puttethe out malencoyle. This lond of Job marchethe to the kyngdom of Caldee. This lond of Caldee is fulle gret: and the langage of that contree is more gret in sownynge, that it is in other parties bezonde ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... like her New England father, conscientious, serious, gravely condemnatory of the lax and ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... talk Big-worded bullies, who by quarrels live— Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give; Jews from St. Mary's Ax, for jobs so wary, That for old clothes they'd even ax St. Mary; And bucks with pockets empty as their pate, Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait; Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse With tippling tipstaves in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... to accept as moral," says George Eliot, "any political leader who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues to be determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would be less immoral even though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir Robert Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the public welfare were supreme in his mind, quelling all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous impartiality." George Eliot is almost without exception sound ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... disturbing any one. Yet he wiped his hands on his handkerchief before he crossed the room to an antique ebony cabinet where he helped himself to a little brandy. Then he came back to the desk and for a while stood lax, staring at the blurs of white ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... in literature as in life, a code of his own, which, if sometimes lax where others were stringent, was always stringent in higher matters, where others were lax. Even the friendship of Emerson could not coerce him into that careful elaboration which gives dignity and sometimes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... the honour of presentation to the Queen-Empress Alexandra. Fancy them asking how many subordinate wives she has to aid her in sustaining the dignity of the King-Emperor! They would learn with surprise that no European sovereign, however lax in morals, has ever had a palace full of concubines as a regular appendage to his regal menage; that for prince and people the ideal is monogamy; and that, although the conduct of the rich and great is often such as to make ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... left the most trusted part of his crew in her, including his mate, Tom Fidget, on whom he could always rely, not that Tom objected to get drunk "at proper times and seasons," as he observed, but duty first and pleasure afterwards was his maxim. His notions of duty were, to be sure, somewhat lax, according to the strict rules of morality, and his only idea of pleasure was a drunken spree on shore when he could leave the craft without risk of her suffering damage either from wind and weather, or the officers of the law. He was a bullet-headed fellow, ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... priests' hands, and Joash is not afraid to assume a high tone with the culprits, and even with Jehoiada as their official head. He was in some sense responsible for his subordinates, and probably, though his own hands were clean, he may have been too lax in looking after the disposal of the funds. Note that while Joash rebuked the priests, and determined the new arrangements, it was Jehoiada who carried them out and provided the chest for receiving the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the troops with nothing to do except the daily drill and parade, and drinking toddy, has demoralized them. The under-officers are but little better than the men, spending most of their time in the taverns playing cards. Discipline is lax. I shall not be surprised at whatever ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... and act as a reserve, with the other he advanced rapidly upon the enemy. The Syracusans, who had perhaps reckoned too much on the known indolence of Nicias, were taken by surprise. Their discipline was lax, and many of them had left their posts, and gone off into the town. Nevertheless, they met the attack with firmness: those who were on the spot hastened to assume their weapons, which they had laid aside, while the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... a character as a clergyman, very different from that which the high feelings and strict principles which animated him at his ordination would have seemed to ensure. He was, in fact, a loose, slovenly man, somewhat too fond of his tumbler of punch; a little lax, perhaps, as to clerical discipline, but very staunch as to doctrine. He possessed no industry or energy of any kind; but he was good-natured and charitable, lived on friendly terms with all his neighbours, and was intimate with every one that dwelt ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... remarks on the subject were all too indicative of the difficulties which were later to arise. The Assembly however, neglected to pass such an act, and the Maryland and Virginia Assemblies were equally lax in making ...
— Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign, 1755 • Don H. Berkebile

... finance. In character Miss Stearne was temperamental enough to have been a genius. She was kindly natured, fond of young girls and cared for her pupils with motherly instincts seldom possessed by those in similar positions. She was lax in many respects, severely strict in others. Not always were her rules and regulations dictated by good judgment. Therefore her girls usually found as much fault as other boarding school girls are prone to do, and with somewhat more reason. On the other ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... from which the principal relief to be obtained lies in the indefinite prolongation of his liberty of choice. Finality in matters of momentous decision appears painful to him, and the standard of success which would fairly be applied to the policy of the ordinary statesman seems too lax for the man whose shoulders are pressed down with the weight of the kingdom as it is and the kingdom yet to come. Hence his anxiety to drive a brilliant bargain with the Allies and to leave no hold for hostile criticism at home. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... about to be given, it will be observed that That is never used, whether it correspond to the quod or the ut of the Latin. Nee eme vitzn, nap hibe, I see that you are lax; Nee aguteran, Domincotze amo misa ea vitzaca, I know that you have not heard mass Sunday; where vitzaca or vitzcauh is passive perfect, and the literal rendering is, I know, on Sunday your mass was not heard. I desire that you may live here, Nee eme iuide cteo naqum, in which cteo is ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith



Words linked to "Lax" :   unconstipated, regular, tensionless, slack, loose-jointed, droopy, limp, laxness, sagging, drooping, tense, phonetics, floppy, loose, negligent



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