different between backslider vs relapse

English

Etymology

From backslide +? -er.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?baksla?d?/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?bæksla?d??/

Noun

backslider (plural backsliders)

1. A recidivist; one who backslides, especially in a religious sense; an apostate.
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Judgement of Dungara’, Black and White, Folio Society 2004, vol. 1, p. 382:

     At night the Red Elephant Tusk boomed and groaned among the hills, and the faithful waked and said: ‘The God of Things as They Are matures revenge against the backsliders.’

   • 2009, Andrew F. Cooper, "Confronting Vulnerability through Resilient Diplomacy: Antigua and the WTO Internet Gambling Dispute with the United States" in Andrew F. Cooper and Timothy M. Shaw (eds.), The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resilience, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 216,

     The choice of unilateralism by the US also exposed it to charges that it is a backslider on its WTO commitments.

   • 2012, Brian Bethune, "Two against one: About coupledom and the stigma of being single" in Maclean's, 20 June, 2012, [1]

     You say that you “lapse into coupledom” on occasion. Do you get grief from fellow militant singles for being a backslider?

   She married him thinking to change his ways, and for a while he got religion, but he was ever a backslider; she soon began finding bottles stashed about the house.

Anagrams

• blackrides

English

Etymology

From Latin relapsus, past participle of relabi (“to slide back, fall back”), from re- (“back”) + labi (“to slip, slide, fall”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???læps/, /??i??læps/
• Rhymes: -æps

Verb

relapse (third-person singular simple present relapses, present participle relapsing, simple past and past participle relapsed)

1. (intransitive) To fall back again; to slide or turn back into a former state or practice.

2. (intransitive, medicine, of a disease) To recur; to worsen, be aggravated (after a period of improvement).
3. To slip or slide back physically; to turn back.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Dryden to this entry?)

Hyponyms

• (to fall back into a former state or practice): fall off the wagon

Translations

Noun

relapse (plural relapses)

1. The act or situation of relapsing.
2. (medicine) An occasion when a person becomes ill again after a period of improvement
3. (obsolete) One who has relapsed, or fallen back into error; a backslider.

Translations

Further reading

• relapse in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• relapse in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• relapse at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• Leapers, Perales, leapers, pleaser, presale, repeals

Italian

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -apse

Adjective

relapse

1. feminine plural of relapso

Noun

relapse f pl

1. plural of relapsa

Latin

Participle

rel?pse

1. vocative masculine singular of rel?psus