Emily Dickinson Lexicon

LAPSE, v.i. [laps.]

1. To glide; to pass slowly, silently or by degrees. This disposition to shorten our words by retrenching the vowels, is nothing else but a tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from which we descended. – Swift.
2. To slide or slip in moral conduct; to fail in duty; to deviate from rectitude; to commit a fault. To lapse in fullness / Is sorer than to lie for need. – Shak.
3. To slip or commit a fault by inadvertency or mistake. Homer, in his characters of Vulcan and Thersites, has lapsed into the burlesque character. – Addison.
4. To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, by the omission or negligence of the patron. If the archbishop shall not fill it up within six months ensuing, it lapses to the king. – Ayliffe.
5. To fall from a state of innocence, or from truth, faith or perfection. Once more I will renew / His lapsed powers. – Milton.