Laxly

adv. [f. LAX a. + -LY².]

  1.  In physical sense: Loosely; with loose cohesion; slackly, without tension.

1756.  C. Lucas, Ess. Waters, I. 24. With [it] all the other elements … are more laxly or intimately blended.

1887.  D. C. Murray & Herman, One Traveller Returns, ii. 35. The queen’s head fell laxly on the arm which encircled her, and the child began to scream.

  b.  Bot., etc.: With loose or open arrangement; not closely, compactly or densely.

1847.  W. E. Steele, Field Bot., 191. The flor. thin, laxly imbricated.

1852.  Dana, Crust., I. 586. Hand … laxly pubescent about the fingers.

1867.  J. R. Jackson, in Intell. Observ., No. 62. 129. Laxly or densely imbricate.

1870.  Hooker, Stud. Flora, 101. Vicia sylvatica … Racemes laxly 6–18-flowered.

  2.  With moral or intellectual looseness; without strictness, precision or exactness.

1680.  Answ. Stillingfleet’s Serm., 12. We will not speak so laxly altogether as he does there.

1773.  Johnson, in Boswell, 24 Oct. Nobody, at times, talks more laxly than I do.

1779.  [Burke], Ibid., 12–19 Oct. I do not think that men who live laxly in the world, as you and I do, can with propriety assume such an authority.

1838–9.  Hallam, Hist. Lit., III. III. vi. 302. The former of these corrective functions must have been rather laxly exercised.

1867.  Freeman, Norm. Conq. (ed. 3), I. iii. 102. The … Thegns would attend more laxly. Ibid. (1868), (1876), II. ix. 403. We must remember how laxly that word is often taken.

1889.  H. D. Traill, Strafford, 74. The enforcement of the laxly administered penal statutes.