laps-, lab-
(Latin: to slip, to fall; to glide)
2. The distance covered, as on a racecourse: Leonar ran three laps around the track before tripping and falling down just before the finish line.
3. To move food or liquid to the mouth using the tongue: The dog laps the water quickly because it is very thirsty.
2. To subside or to sink away gradually from a typical pattern of belief or behavior: Brittney was ill and slowly began to lapse into a coma.
At the international racing competition, the Lapps ran three consecutive laps when they only needed to run two laps; the runners later decided they had a slight lapse of memory about how many laps to run.
They were so tired that they sat on the benches with bottles of water on their laps and they joked that they hoped that they didn't have another relapse of memory or at least not until there was an elapse of several years.
2. Regarding a break in the continuity of something; Jim's attention in class turned out to be lapsable and he missed part of what his teacher was talking about.
3. A passage of time: Somehow there was a lapsable interval following the accident and Mary couldn't remember what had happened.
4. Liable to become null and void through disuse, negligence, or death: Chuck forgot that his membership was lapsible, and it expired at the end of the year.
2. Expired or terminated.
2. Someone who has a decline or a fall in standards.
3. Pauses in continuity.
2. A slip of the pen, an unintentional writing error; especially, in spelling taxonomic names.
A click on the image will take you to the series of illustrated quizzes which will appear in random order or you may click on this image quiz link.
An embarrassing example of lapsus linguae.
This shows that a lapsus linguae can be embarrassing, to say the least. The situation could also be considered a lapsus memoriae or a "lapse of memory".
There is one more mental lapse, one that involves carelessness in writing: lapsus calami or a slip of the pen. The word calamus was a reed formerly used as a pen.
A lapsus linguae can result from laliophobia or lalophobia
In the world of human relations, a person can suffer from laliophobia (lalophobia); that is, a terror of talking or of stuttering when trying to talk.
An individual's speech difficulty may be aggravated by situations that arise from anxieties or fears of self-consciousness.
Of course, there is also the other condition called, lalomania, a compulsion or abnormal desire to talk excessively. Neither situation is considered desirable in human relations.
See this special presentation about public personalities who have committed various forms of lapsus linguae.
- lapsus linguae: a slip of the tongue.
- lapsus calami: a slip of the pen.
- lapsus manus: slip of the hand, similar to lapsus calami.
In literature, a number of different types of lapsus memoriae are named depending on the mode of correspondence:
With the variation of lapsus clavis: slip of the typewriter.
Motto on the Seal of the State of South Carolina, U.S.A., and on the Great Seal of the Northwest Territory, USA.