relapse

1. 1.

   a failure to maintain a higher state

   Synonymsbackslidinglapselapsingrelapsingreversionreverting

   Broaderfailure

   Narrowerrecidivism

Other forms of relapse

plural

relapses·

past tense

relapsed·

present participle

relapsing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about relapse

What does relapse mean?

relapse means "deteriorate in health". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in relapse?

relapse has 2 syllables: re-lapse. The stress falls on "lapse". In IPA it is /ɹiˈlæps/.

What is another word for relapse?

Close synonyms include get worse, lapse, recidivate, regress, retrogress. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is relapse a common word?

relapse is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with relapse?

3 words rhyme with relapse. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.