lapse
/læps/ noun C1- A temporary failure; a slip. · memory lapse· lapse of judgment
- A decline or fall in standards.
- A pause in continuity.
- An interval of time between events.
- A termination of a right etc., through disuse or neglect.
- A marked decrease in air temperature with increasing altitude because the ground is warmer than the surrounding air.
- A common-law rule that if the person to whom property is willed were to die before the testator, then the gift would be ineffective.
- A fall or apostasy.
Plural lapses
From the library
It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill.
While we wait, time will be progressing, events will succeed each other; things which in the evening look dark and obscure, appear but too clearly in the light of morning, and sometimes the utterance of one word, or the lapse of a single day, will reveal the most cruel calumnies.”
An unhappy lapse of fortune and the absence of my protector have cast me down, certainly, but not forever.
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