Sliding or falling back; marked by a relapse or return to a former worse state.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
adjective Marked by a relapse; falling back; tending to return to a former worse state.
adjective (Med.) an acute, epidemic, contagious fever, which prevails also endemically in Ireland, Russia, and some other regions. It is marked by one or two remissions of the fever, by articular and muscular pains, and by the presence, during the paroxism of spiral bacterium (Spirochæte) in the blood. It is not usually fatal. Called also famine fever, and recurring fever.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun archaicrelapse
verb Present participle of relapse.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun a failure to maintain a higher state
Etymologies
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Examples
There are different types of -- that we call the relapsing remitting then the secondary progressive where there is an ongoing weakness or a progression of symptoms.
The 11 women and ten men taking part in the new study, led by the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, suffered from a form of the condition known as relapsing-remitting MS.
Between one in ten and one in five patients treated for TB see their disease return after failing, interrupting or relapsing from treatment, the researchers say - that's one million people who are then put on a course of drugs lasting eight months.
The Internet is overrun with clips of teenagers beating homeless people for sport, parents encouraging their kids to fight each other, and countless stories of teen celebs relapsing after rehab.
And soon enough, Tilly starts seeing things: her alcoholic father relapsing, staggering out of a bar with his car keys in hand; her husband uprooting their happy, stable life, a packed U-Haul in their driveway.
In an interview yesterday Michaele described herself as a "denial" patient with relapsing and remitting MS -- while she deals with this chronic illness she rarely shares her diagnosis because "I never wanted to hear 'she can't do it'".
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