Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use lag in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Lag means late. Example: “My phone is starting to lag.”

Examples of lag by meaning

nounA gap, a delay; an interval created by something not keeping up; a latency.

  • But, still, I think that some of that was just a generational lag.2004 May 10, The New Yorker Online,

nounDelay; latency.

  • Whatever the symptom, lag is a drag.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
  • Latency, or lag, is an unavoidable part of Internet gaming.2002, Marty Cortinas, Clifford Colby, The Macintosh bible

nounA 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.1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

verbTo fail to keep up (the pace), to fall behind.

  • 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,

verbTo 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

verbTo respond slowly.

  • My phone is starting to lag.

verbTo 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...
  • 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)...

verbTo slacken.

  • Interest in the scandal will never lag.

More sentences with lag

  • He was a true introvert, and his sociability lagged behind others of his age in the school.From the entry sociability
  • After an initial lag, the experimental group's scores shot past the control group's scores in the fourth week.From the entry shoot
  • Don't rez some enormous prop: it'll lag the server!From the entry rez
  • Jet lag is also known as circadian dysrhythmia.From the entry dysrhythmia
  • The development of Baoshan has long lagged behind that of neighboring Chupei and Chutung.2020 September 25, Hannah Chang, “TSMC’s Expansion Challenges Boundaries”, in CommonWealth Magazine, archived from the original on 26 Sep…. From the entry Chupei
  • No speed that would not lag behind the fore-flight of a heart's desire.2015, George Gissing, A Life's Morning. From the entry foreflight
  • The TOPIX tends to lag behind the blue chip heavy Nikkei.2013 December 26, Stephen Harner, “Whither Japan Stocks: Toyota, Nomura, Daiwa, Softbank, and Japan McDonald's”, in Forbes. From the entry TOPIX
  • Your best bet to negate lag is to go to a server using the zero ping mutator.2002 June 24, drip, “Bandwidth - Lagtime”, in alt.games.unreal.tournament (Usenet). From the entry ping
  • Strange unexplained effects abound, there are regions of gravity overload, of bending telnets, lag and cyberspacetime freezes.1999, Indra Sinha, The Cybergypsies. From the entry cyberspacetime
  • The only place I ever seriously lagged was at the blacksmith shop.1998 January 28, Spatch [username], “Re: *Please Read*”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games (Usenet). From the entry lagfest
  • Phenotypic lag is the delayed phenotypic manifestation off a gene mutation (in additional to mutational lag).1973, Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis. From the entry phenotypic lag
  • The boiler and firebox are lagged with a lightweight Fibreglass mattress.1951 March, “British Railways Standard "Britannia" Class 4-6-2 Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 185. From the entry mattress
  • I noticed, though, that whenever one looked tired and lagged, she let it slip past.1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC. From the entry rap
  • The reference index is calculated using monthly CPI prints but with a lag of between two and three months.2023, Ilia Bouchouev, Virtual Barrels : Quantitative Trading in the Oil Market, Springer, →ISBN, page 150. From the entry print
  • We need Ethernet adapters to help with lag.2020 February 17, penguinz0 (Charles Christopher White Jr.), 4:05 from the start, in Soaked Series Invitational $10,000 Tournament, via…. From the entry Wi-Fi warrior
  • The other ichthyosarcotoxins that have been identified in ciguatoxic fish, scaritoxin and maitotoxin, lag behind ciguatoxin in physicochemical characterization.2012, David L. Spector, Dinoflagellates, →ISBN, page 228. From the entry ichthyosarcotoxin
  • The young principal timpanist, Timothy Genis, was superb throughout, though his sidekick timpanist sometimes lagged in the final unisons.2007 July 16, James R. Oestreich, “With Levine as Tour Guide, a Journey Through Mahler’s Third Symphony”, in New York Times. From the entry unison
  • Lag, in particular, is a serious problem in the larger groups; LambdaMOO even introduced a '"lagometer" on screen at one point.2006, David Crystal, “The language of virtual worlds”, in Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 184. From the entry lagometer
  • Thus, even though a total of four lags of inflation enters the right hand side, forward looking behavior still predominates.1999, Galí, Jordi and Mark Gertler, “Inflation dynamics: A structural econometric analysis”, in Journal of Monetary Economics, volume 44…. From the entry predominate
  • Lagger is apparently related to the verb lag.1981, David L. Gold, Three New York Cityisms: Sliding Pond, Potsy, Akey, Jstor. From the entry lagger
  • After all, between the jet lag and the crying I’m probably a little dehydrated, so this lemonadey concoction is likely just what I need.2021, kc dyer, An Accidental Odyssey, Jove Books, →ISBN, page 44. From the entry lemonadey
  • For more mind-numbing claptrap, how about “all-natural liquid oxygen” drops under the tongue to fight jet lag, fatigue, hangover, and aging skin?2014, Joe Schwarcz, Is That a Fact?: Frauds, Quacks, and the Real Science of Everyday Life, →ISBN. From the entry liquid oxygen
  • Wireless internet access (wi-fi) is marvellously widespread in ‘E-stonia’ (you may find yourself wondering why your own country lags so far behind this tech-savvy wizard).2009, Carolyn Bain, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Lonely Planet, →ISBN, page 165. From the entry E-stonia
  • The idea of having a time lag is to allow for situations when a corruption of some type affects the source server.2008, Tony Redmond, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with SP1. From the entry corruption
  • Even with the pedal to the metal, the Exelero's sheer bulk caused a multisecond lag from the twin-turbo-charged V12's wind-up to actual launch.2007 January 24, Sue Callaway, “Jonesing for a Maybach”, in CNN, archived from the original on 17 Apr 2009. From the entry horsepower
  • What seems to be growing more pronounced is the time lag between open criticism, often via the Internet, and the state’s crackdown.2005 January–February, Mary E[lizabeth] Gallagher, “China in 2004: Stability above All”, in Asian Survey […], volume XLV, number 1…. From the entry samizdat
  • You no longer need to underfire your products or guess at their high temperature behavior simply because of lag in furnace technology.1973, Ceramic Industry, volume 101, numbers 2–6, page 68. From the entry underfire
  • Therefore he has Berowne leave the stage first, lets Costard lag behind for a little solitary funniment, and then bolt after Berowne.1930, Harley Granville-Barker, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, in Prefaces to Shakespeare. From the entry funniment

Meaning of lag

  1. adjective Late.
  2. adjective Last; long-delayed.
  3. adjective Last made; hence, made of refuse; inferior.

Full definition of lag

Questions about lag in a sentence

How do you use lag in a sentence?
Lag is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “My phone is starting to lag.”
What is a short sentence with lag?
“My phone is starting to lag.”
What does lag mean?
Lag means late.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lag (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use lag in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/lag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.