lag

1 the act of slowing down or falling behind [syn: slowdown, retardation]

2 the time between one event, process, or period and another [syn: interim]

3 one of several thin slats of wood forming the sides of a barrel or bucket [syn: stave]

1 hang (back) or fall (behind) in movement, progress, development, etc. [syn: dawdle, fall back, fall behind]

2 lock up or confine, in or as in a jail; "The suspects were imprisoned without trial"; "the murderer was incarcerated for the rest of his life" [syn: imprison, incarcerate, immure, put behind bars, jail, jug, gaol, put away, remand]

3 throw or pitch at a mark, as with coins

4 cover with lagging to prevent heat loss; "lag pipes" [also: lagging, lagged]

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -æɡ

Adjective

• rfv-inflection lagger

1. late

Quotations

• 1592: Some tardy cripple bore the countermand, / That came too lag to see him buried. — William Shakespeare, King Richard III

Noun

1. a gap; an interval created by something not keeping up
2. a prisoner, a criminal.
3. bad connection, loss of connection

Quotations

• 2004: 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. — The New Yorker Online, 10 May 2004

Related terms

• time lag
• jet lag

Verb

1. to not keep up (the pace), to fall behind
2. to cover (for example, pipes) with felt strips or similar material

Quotations

to fail to keep up

• 1587???: Lazy beast! / Why last art thou now? Thou hast never used / To lag thus hindmost — George Chapman, The Odysseys of Homer

• 1596: Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag, / That lasie seemd in being ever last, / Or wearied with bearing of her bag / Of needments at his backe. — Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Canto I

• 1798: Brown skeletons of leaves that lag / My forest-brook along — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in seven parts, 1798

Construction: to lag behind

• ???: While he, whose tardy feet had lagg'd behind, / Was doom'd the sad reward of death to find. — 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

• 2004: 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. — The New Yorker, 5 April 2004

to cover with felt strips

• 1974???: Outside seems old enough: / Red brick, lagged pipes, and someone walking by it / Out to the car park, free. — Philip Larkin, The Building

Anagrams

• gal

Derived terms

• lagging
• laggard

See also

• tardy

Afrikaans

Etymology

Dutch lachen

Verb

lag

1. laugh

Danish

Noun

lag

1. layer

Dutch

Verb form

lag

1. singular past tense of liggen

Faroese

Pronunciation

[lɛaː]

Noun

lag

1. layer
2. (in compounds) what belongs together (company, union)
3. regularity, order
4. skill, capability
5. method, system
6. importance
7. mood
8. design, shape
9. melody

Usage notes

what belongs together

• i-c in compounds felag, hjúnalag, etc.

order

• í lagi - in order, all right, ok

skill

• hann hevur gott lag á tí - he has good skills in that

importance

• tað liggur einki lag á - this is not important

mood

• tað er einki lag á honum - he is in a bad mood

Declension

German

Verb form

lag

1. 1st and 3rd person singular past tense of liegen

Icelandic

Pronunciation

Noun

lag

1. layer
2. song

Irish

Etymology

From lac < < , cf. slack and Latin laxus.

Pronunciation

• a Munster lang=ga|[l̪ˠɑɡ]
• lang=ga|[l̪ˠaɡ]

Adjective

1. weak

Maltese

Noun

lag

1. lake

Synonyms

• għadira

Norwegian

Noun

1. team (group of people)

Swedish

Etymology 1

Pronunciation

Noun

1. law; a written or understood rule that concerns behaviours and the appropriate consequences thereof. Laws are usually associated with mores.
2. law; the body of written rules governing a society.
3. law; a one-sided contract.
4. law; an observed physical law.
5. law; a statement that is true under specified conditions.

See also

• lagens långa arm
• lagbok
• lagföra

Etymology 2

Pronunciation

Noun

1. In the context of "cooking|lang=sv": a water-based solution of sugar, salt and/or other spices; e.g. brine

Derived terms

• saltlag
• sockerlag
• ättikslag

Etymology 3

Pronunciation

Noun

1. team; group of people which in sports compete together versus another team; or in general, work closely together

See also

• lagarbete
• lagsport
• lagspel

In computing and especially computer networks, lag (slang) is a symptom where result of an action appears later than expected. While different kinds of latency are well defined technical terms, lag is the symptom, not the cause.

Latency is the time taken for a packet of data to be sent from onetime for encoding the packet for transmission and transmitting it, the time for that serial data to traverse the network equipment between the nodes, and the time to get the data off the circuit. This is also known as "one-way latency". A minimum bound on latency is determined by the distance between communicating devices and the speed at which the signal propagates in the circuits (typically 70-95% of the speed of light). Actual latency is much higher, due to packet processing in networking equipment, and other traffic.

While strictly every packet experiences lag, the term lag is used to refer to delays noticeable to the user. Latency is directly related to the physical distance that data travels. Thus the time taken for a packet to travel from a computer server in Europe to a client in the same region is likely to be shorter than the time to travel from Europe to the Americas or Asia. But protocols and well written code that avoid unnecessary data transmissions are less affected by the latency inherent in a network. Modern corporate networks have devices to cache frequently requested data and accelerate protocols, thus reducing application response time, the cumulative effect of latency.

See also

• Lag Switch - A device used to create lag in an online game
• Bandwidth - Measure of a connection's maximum data transfer capacity.
• Ping - Tool for determining network latency with regard to another system.
• Avalon - Movie by Mamoru Oshii, in which large parts of the portrayed society play an immense online virtual reality game, features lag as a phenomenon to which players react with bodily symptoms (convulsions, nausea).
• Lagometer - A 'device' that measures lag.
• Input lag
• Displacement Lag - Another type of lag.

External links

• The Gamer's Guide from Blues News - Lag Section
• It's the Latency, Stupid
• Bandwidth and Latency

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