Word.ws English Dictionary

lag

UK/læɡ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/laɡ/

lag adjective: late. Also the clipping of lag screw.

Adjective (1)

lag

  1. Late.
    • Some tardy cripple bore the countermand, / That came too lag to see him buried.1592, William Shakespeare, King Richard III
  2. (obsolete) Last; long-delayed.
    • the lag end of my lifec. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  3. Last made; hence, made of refuse; inferior.
    • We know your thoughts of us, that laymen are lag souls, and rubbish of remaining clay.1690, John Dryden, Don Sebastian, King of Portugal

Noun

lag (countable and uncountable, plural lags)

  1. (countable) A gap, a delay; an interval created by something not keeping up; a latency.
    • Although this work is now presented to the world at large, people who read through it before publication severally raised some issues that should be addressed. These resolve around the lag between the field research and the publication of the monograph, a period of rather more than two decades; the...1995, Donald R. DeGlopper, “Introduction”, in Lukang: Commerce and Community in a Chinese City, State University of New York Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 5
    • During the Second World War, for instance, the Washington Senators had a starting rotation that included four knuckleball pitchers. But, still, I think that some of that was just a generational lag.2004 May 10, The New Yorker Online
  2. (uncountable) Delay; latency.
    • Whatever the symptom, lag is a drag. But what causes it? One cause is delays in getting the data from your PC to the game server.1999, Loyd Case, Building the ultimate game PC
    • When the lag is low, 2 or 3 seconds perhaps, Internet chatters seem reasonably content.2001, Patricia M. Wallace, The psychology of the Internet
    Synonyms:
    latency
  3. (Ireland, UK, archaic, slang) One sentenced to transportation for a crime.
  4. (Ireland, UK, slang) A prisoner, a criminal.
    • On both these occasions I had ended up behind the bars, and you might suppose that an old lag like myself would have been getting used to it by now.1934, P. G. Wodehouse, Thank You, Jeeves
    • He sat with his great head tipped forward, scowling with a lag's sullenness, and I swear he had closed off his hearing with his thinking and hadn't heard us coming. 'Father,' said Pym.1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy
  5. (slang) A period of imprisonment.
    • I wasn't scared any more; the second lag wasn't easy, but I wasn't really scared of anything. […] So in my later lags, when I walked into prison everyone had heard about me.2017, Anna Leask, Behind Bars: Real-life stories from inside New Zealand's prisons
  6. A method of deciding which player is to start. Both players simultaneously strike a cue ball from the baulk line to hit the top cushion and rebound down the table; the player whose ball finishes closest to the baulk cushion wins.
  7. One who lags; that which comes in last.
    • the lag of all the flock1725, Homer, “Book IX”, in [William Broome], transl., The Odyssey of Homer. […], volume II, London: […] Bernard Lintot, →OCLC, page 226, line 526
  8. The fag-end; the rump; hence, the lowest class.
    • The reſt of your Fees, O Gods, the Senators of Athens, together with the common lagge of People, what is amiſſe in them, you Gods, make ſuteable for deſtruction.c. 1605–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  9. A stave of a cask, drum, etc.; especially (engineering) one of the narrow boards or staves forming the covering of a cylindrical object, such as a boiler, or the cylinder of a carding machine or steam engine.
  10. A bird, the greylag.

Verb

lag (third-person singular simple present lags, present participle lagging, simple past and past participle lagged)

  1. To fail to keep up (the pace), to fall behind.
    • Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag, / That lasie seemd in being ever last, / Or wearied with bearing of her bag / Of needments at his backe.1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book), Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • Lazy beast! / Why last art thou now? Thou hast never used / To lag thus hindmost1616, George Chapman, The Odysseys of Homer
  2. To cover (for example, pipes) with felt strips or similar material.
    • Spun glass mattresses are used for lagging the boiler, which has three Ross pop safety valves on the front ring.1941 April, “British Locomotive Developments”, in Railway Magazine, page 173
    • Outside seems old enough: / Red brick, lagged pipes, and someone walking by it / Out to the car park, free.c. 1974, Philip Larkin, The Building
  3. (informal) To respond slowly.
    • My phone is starting to lag.
  4. (UK, archaic, slang) To transport as a punishment for crime.
    • She lags us if we poach.1847, Thomas De Quincey, Secret Societies"
  5. (slang) To arrest or apprehend.
    • If a fellow gave them trouble being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 8: Laestrygonians]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 155
    • "We must get the old dear out," said Lord Roxton to Malone. "He'll be had for manslaughter if we don't. What I mean, he's not responsible - he'll sock someone and be lagged for it."1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
  6. (transitive) To slacken
    • Interest in the scandal will never lag.
    • The weight would lagge thee that art wont to flye.1632, Thomas Heywood, The Iron Age

Adjective (2) capitalized: LAG

LAG (comparative more LAG, superlative most LAG)

  1. Loose (inclined to play many starting hands, including weak ones) and aggressive (inclined to raise often).

Also used as

lag is also the clipping of lag screw.

Examples of lag in a sentence

  • Latency, or lag, is an unavoidable part of Internet gaming.2002, Marty Cortinas, Clifford Colby, The Macintosh bible:
  • Brown skeletons of leaves that lag / My forest-brook along1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in seven parts:
  • But by another set of numbers—longevity and income inequality—it began to lag behind Northern Europe and Japan.2004 April 5, The New Yorker,:

All 40 example sentences with lag

Synonyms of lag

Antonyms

Forms of lag

Noun
plurallags
Verb
third-person singular presentlags
present participlelagging
past participlelagged
pastlagged
Adjective
comparativemore LAG
superlativemost LAG

Past tense of lag: lagged

Plural of lag: lags

Origin of lag

Of unknown origin. Possibly of North Germanic origin.

Acronym of loose-aggressive.

Words formed from lag

Phrases with lag

Words that rhyme with lag

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lag

What does lag mean?
Lag means late.
How do you use lag in a sentence?
Latency, or lag, is an unavoidable part of Internet gaming.
What part of speech is lag?
Lag can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce lag?
Lag is pronounced /læɡ/ (UK).

Words near lag in the dictionary

  1. Lafuente
  2. Lafuentes
  3. Lafufu
  4. Lafufus
  5. lafutidine
  6. lag
  7. Lag B'Omer
  8. lag behind
  9. lag bolt
  10. lag bolts
  11. lag machine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lag (page history and authors); LAG (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-lag.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lag.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.