Not strict, severe, or careful enough; relaxed in standards or discipline, often implying negligence or permissiveness.
From Latin laxus meaning 'loose, slack, wide'. The word maintained its physical sense of looseness while developing metaphorical meanings of moral or procedural looseness, reflecting how physical and abstract concepts of tightness/looseness mirror each other.
The word 'lax' shares its root with 'relax' and 'laxative', all involving the concept of loosening or releasing tension. In linguistics, 'lax' vowels are pronounced with less muscular tension than 'tense' vowels, showing how this ancient concept of looseness applies even to speech sounds.
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