All 7 Uses of
lapse
in
Middlemarch
- Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.†
Chpt Prel
- "Oh, Mr. Lydgate!" said Mary, with an unmistakable lapse into indifference.†
Chpt 1 *
- Among our valued friends is there not some one or other who is a little too self-confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?†
Chpt 2
- As he threw down his book, stretched his legs towards the embers in the grate, and clasped his hands at the back of his head, in that agreeable afterglow of excitement when thought lapses from examination of a specific object into a suffusive sense of its connections with all the rest of our existence—seems, as it were, to throw itself on its back after vigorous swimming and float with the repose of unexhausted strength—Lydgate felt a triumphant delight in his studies, and something…†
Chpt 2
- …of Marquesses and Viscounts which seemed to prove that blood asserted its pre-eminence even among black-legs; but the minute retentiveness of his memory was chiefly shown about the horses he had himself bought and sold; the number of miles they would trot you in no time without turning a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of passionate asseveration, in which he would assist the imagination of his hearers by solemnly swearing that they never saw anything like it.†
Chpt 3
- Lydgate was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our lives.†
Chpt 6
- She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds, and unconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering.†
Chpt 8
Definition:
-
(lapse as in: a lapse in judgement) a change in behavior or state--usually undesired such as a temporary failureThe exact meaning of this sense of lapse is often subject to its context:
- basic example that simply indicates an undesired change in behavior -- "lapsed into alcoholism"
- example indicating that the change was short-term and due to a failure (often of effort or diligence) -- "a lapse in judgment"
- example indicating return to a previous undesired behavior or state -- "lapsed into her old bad habits"
- examples indicating a change in what was occurring where the change is not necessarily negative -- "There was a lapse in the conversation," or "She stopped talking as she lapsed into her own internal world."