Word Confusion: Lacks versus Lax

Posted May 29, 2017 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
14 Jan 2023

Don’t be lax in your editing *shakes finger*. It lacks a certain . . . professionalism with this pair of heterographs.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Lacks	Lax
Deutschenbora (Nossen) Rittergut Herrenhaus is Jörg Blobelt’s own work under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. — This building lacks a roof.	Registration Open by Steve Hersh, <https://visualhunt.com/author/2cc450>, is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license. via VisualHunt. — Looks like a learning experience for this young LAX player.
Part of Grammar:
Noun; Verb, intransitive & transitive Plural for the noun: lacks Gerund: lacking Third person present verb: lacks Past tense or past participle: lacked Present participle: lacking	Adjective ¹; Noun ² Plural for noun: lax
Noun: Deficiency or absence A particular deficiency or absence Verb, intransitive: To be absent or missing, as something needed or desirable Verb, transitive: To be without or deficient in To lack ability To lack the necessities of life To fall short in respect of	Adjective: Not sufficiently strict, severe, or careful ¹ [Of the limbs or muscles] Relaxed, loose, slack Not tense, not rigid, or not firm Not rigidly exact or precise Vague [Of the bowels] Loose [Phonetics; of a speech sound, especially a vowel] Pronounced with the vocal muscles relaxed Open or not compact Having a loosely cohering structure Porous Noun: [US; informal] Lacrosse ²
Examples:
Noun: A lack of funding brought the project to a halt. Owing to a lack of supporters, the reforms did not succeed. After he left, they really felt the lack. Verb, intransitive: Three votes are lacking to make a majority. Since the house lacks a security system, Mabel is worried about Jack doing week-long business trips. We suspected that he was lying, but proof was lacking. Verb, transitive: He lacks three votes to win. What he lacks in brains, he makes up for in brawn. She lacks in patience. The safe lacks a lock. It is impossible for someone who lacks empathy to understand grief.	Adjective: They have lax security arrangements at the airport. He’d been a bit lax about discipline in school lately. After that workout, I feel quite lax. Chronic constipation may contribute to anal fissures, hemorrhoids, or lax bowels. Lax vowels are short while tense vowels are long. When stressed, lax vowels do not occur alone at the ends of words, but always need a following consonant. His morals have always been lax. I hate shaking hands with him; he’s got such a lax handshake. Jesse has some lax ideas. I’m worried about one of my patients, as he has such lax tissue. It’s difficult to work with such lax texture. Noun: I wore pads and a helmet whenever I played lax. Play lax later? The oldest organized sport in North America is lax.
Derivatives:
	Adjective: laxative, laxer, laxest, overlax Adverb: laxly, overlaxly Noun: laxation, laxative, laxity, laxness, overlaxness
History of the Word:
Middle English corresponding to, and perhaps partly from the Middle Dutch and the Middle Low German lak meaning deficiency and the Middle Dutch laken meaning lack, blame.	Late Middle English, in the sense of loose, as is said of the bowels. It is from the Latin laxus. 1950s as an abbreviation of lacrosse, with X representing crosse (by association with cross).

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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