lag

Etymology

Probably North Germanic origin.

adj

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.
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

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 use or non-use of various academic forms of terminology, frames of reference, modes of analysis, or "theoretical paradigms"; and my use of the present tense to describe a place that is most certainly not that way now. 1995, Donald R. DeGlopper, “Introduction”, in Lukang: Commerce and Community in a Chinese City, State University of New York Press, →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. May 10 2004, 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
   Latency, or lag, is an unavoidable part of Internet gaming. 2002, Marty Cortinas, Clifford Colby, The Macintosh bible
3. (Britain, slang, archaic) One sentenced to transportation for a crime.
4. (Britain, 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. (snooker) A method of deciding which player shall 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.
6. One who lags; that which comes in last.
7. The fag-end; the rump; hence, the lowest class.
8. 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.
9. A bird, the greylag.

verb

1. To fail to keep up (the pace), to fall behind.
   Lazy beast! / Why last art thou now? Thou hast never used / To lag thus hindmost 1616, George Chapman, The Odysseys of Homer
   1717, The Metamorphoses of Ovid translated into English verse under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, William Congreve and other eminent hands While he, whose tardy feet had lagg'd behind, / Was doom'd the sad reward of death to find.
   Brown skeletons of leaves that lag / My forest-brook along 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in seven parts
   Over the next fifty years, by most indicators dear to economists, the country remained the richest in the world. But by another set of numbers—longevity and income inequality—it began to lag behind Northern Europe and Japan. 5 April 2004, The New Yorker,
2. To cover (for example, pipes) with felt strips or similar material (referring to a time lag effect in thermal transfer).
   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. (computing, informal, video games) To respond slowly.
   My phone is starting to lag.
4. (UK, slang, archaic) To transport as a punishment for crime.
   She lags us if we poach. 1847, Thomas De Quincey, Secret Societies"
5. (UK, slang, archaic) To arrest or apprehend.
6. (transitive) To cause to lag; to slacken.
   The weight would lagge thee that art wont to flye. 1632, Thomas Heywood, The Iron Age