[f. LAPSE v. + -ING2.]
1. a. or water: Gliding, dropping. b. Of time: Gliding or passing away.
a. 1771. Smollett (Worc.). To magic murmur of lapsing streams.
1794. Mrs. Radcliffe, Myst. Udolpho, xv. At twilight hour, with tritons gay I dance upon the lapsing tides.
1827. in Hone, Every-day Bk., II. 893. We pass near some gently lapsing water.
1841. Lady F. Hastings, Poems, 11.
| Though many a lapsing year hath intervened;— | |
| All is the same: I only—I am changed! |
1862. W. W. Story, Roba di R., xvii. (1864), 352. Rome is the city of fountains. Wherever one goes he hears the pleasant sound of lapsing water.
1862. S. Lucas, Secularia, 381. Test the growth of enlightenment by lapsing centuries.
2. Sinking (into decay or depravity); failing, flagging.
1667. Decay Chr. Piety, vii. 146. The lapsing state of human corruption.
1668. Howe, Bless. Righteous (1825), 90. It is the peculiar honor and prerogative of a Deity … to be the fulcrum, the centre of a lapsing creation.
1867. G. Macdonald, Poems, 67. O lapsing heart! thy feeble strain Sends up the blood so spare.
Hence Lapsingly adv., in a lapsing manner.
1848. Blackw. Mag., LXIV. 291. The soft moan Of billows that shoreward Are lapsingly thrown.
