Word.ws English Dictionary

lapwise

lapwise adverb: on a lap.

Adverb

lapwise (not comparable)

  1. On a lap.
    • Despite their name, laptops seem to rarely be used lapwise.
    • The man rushed through it just in time to leave beside the road a volcanic eruption that to have been the recipient of which, lapwise, would have made the trip memorable indeed.1986, Peter De Vries, Peckham's Marbles, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, page 91

Examples of lapwise in a sentence

  • Things could have been a lot worse for me had she not been situated exactly where she was, lapwise, and anyway her hair grew back rather quickly.1991, Robert Hitt Neill, Don't Fish Under the Dingleberry Tree (And Other Philosophies of Life), Leland, M.S.: Mississippi River Publishing...
  • Some attendees sat cross-legged with a book resting lapwise.2023 December 19, Molly Young, “My Evening at Reading Rhythms, a Party for Bookish Introverts”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The...

Origin of lapwise

From lap + -wise.

Questions about lapwise

What does lapwise mean?
Lapwise means on a lap.
How do you use lapwise in a sentence?
Things could have been a lot worse for me had she not been situated exactly where she was, lapwise, and anyway her hair grew back rather quickly.
What part of speech is lapwise?
Lapwise is an adverb.

Words near lapwise in the dictionary

  1. Lapwai
  2. lapward
  3. lapware
  4. lapwing
  5. lapwings
  6. lapwise
  7. lapwork
  8. Lapworth
  9. Lapège
  10. Laquana
  11. Laquanta

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lapwise (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.

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