[a. F. laxité, ad. L. laxitātem, f. laxus LAX a.] The quality of being lax.
1. Looseness, irretentiveness (of the bowels, etc.); slackness, want of tension (in the muscular or nervous fibers, etc.).
1528. Paynel, trans. Reg. Salerni (1535), 119 b. Superfluous drynkynge of cold drynke … causeth the palsey, or laxite of the membres.
1620. Venner, Via Recta, viii. 184. The stomacke … if it be subiect to laxitie.
1672. Wiseman, Wounds, II. v. 36. There arises a laxity and indigesture in the Wound.
1707. Floyer, Physic. Pulse-Watch, 203. The Laxity of Fibres in the Habit of the Body, or Viscera, is restored by Exercise, Friction, and cold Baths.
1775. Johnson, Lett. to Mrs. Thrale, 13 July. In her early state of laxity and feebleness.
1789. W. Buchan, Dom. Med. (1790), 319. This disease may … proceed from too great a laxity of the organs which secrete the urine.
1799. M. Underwood, Dis. Childr. (ed. 4), I. 6. The great moisture and laxity of infants.
2. Looseness of texture or cohesion; openness, uncompact structure or arrangement.
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 229. The skin … by the closenesse or laxitie thereof, as he drawes it in, or lets it out.
1660. Boyle, New Exp. Phys. Mech., xxxvi. 300. The dir-form consistence, as to laxity and compactness of the Air at several distances from us.
1692. Bentley, Boyle Lect., vii. (1693), 25. The former [cause] could never beget Whirlpools in a Chaos of so great a Laxity and Thinness.
3. Looseness or slackness in the moral and intellectual spheres; want of firmness, strictness or precision.
1623. Cockeram, Laxitie, pardon, chiefly cheapnesse.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Laxity, looseness, wildness, liberty.
1775. Johnson, Tax. no Tyr., 20. Every expedition would in those days of laxity have produced a distinct and independent state.
1795. Mason, Ch. Mus., III. 187. I need not observe on the laxity of that Version.
1830. Scott, Demonol., viii. 260. Such laxity of discipline afforded scope to the wildest enthusiasm.
1838. J. H. Newman, Par. Serm. (1839), IV. ix. 156. All these laxities of conduct impress upon our conscience a vague sense … of guilt.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., ix. II. 422. The very faults of their colleague, the known laxity of his principles.
1858. Froude, Hist. Eng., III. xvi. 407. Laxity of assertion in matters of number is so habitual as to have lost the character of falsehood.
1865. Tylor, Early Hist. Man., iv. 77. Carelessness and laxity in articulation.
1870. Rogers, Hist. Gleanings, Ser. II. 54. Laxity of belief is coupled with laxity of practice.
1875. Protests Lords, I. Pref. 10. A laxity of language, which must have conveyed far more than the framers of the Act contemplated.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 265. Such tales … engender laxity of morals among the young.
† 4. Spaciousness. [A Latinism: cf. LAX a. 6.]
1650. Fuller, Pisgah, II. v. 122. The hills in Palestine generally had in their sides plenty of caves, and those of such laxity and receit that ours in England are but conny-boroughs if compared to the palaces which those hollow places afforded.
