Other forms: relaxed, relaxing, relaxes
To relax is to let go of tension — in the body, in the mind, or in a rule. Relax your shoulders, relax after work, relax the restrictions.
It is intransitive most of the time: you relax, full stop. It is also transitive with a body part or a rule as object: relax your grip, relax the rules. What it does not take is a reflexive — relax yourself is wrong in English, though it is right in French and Spanish and so is one of the commonest imported errors. Relaxing describes the thing that causes the state, relaxed describes the person in it, and mixing those two up is the standard -ing versus -ed adjective problem in its purest form.
1verbrelaxTo become less tense or worried.~60%
“Sit down and relax for ten minutes.”
2verbmuscleTo make a muscle or a grip less tight.~20%
“Relax your hand or you will cramp.”
3verbruleTo make a rule less strict.~20%
“The council relaxed the parking rules for the festival.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
relax is a way of easing.
Latin relaxare is re-, back, plus laxare, to loosen, from laxus, loose — the same root as lax, laxative and, at some distance, release. Every sense in English is still that loosening: of a muscle, of a rule, of a mood.
Latin
relaxāre — relax, loosen, open
Old French
relaxer
Middle English
relaxen
English, today
relax
Built from
From Middle English relaxen, from Old French relaxer, from Latin relaxāre (“relax, loosen, open”), from re- (“back”) + laxāre (“loosen”), from laxus (“loose, free”). by surface analysis, re- + lax.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA