lenient
adjective
Did you know?
If you’ve ever had a peaceful, easy feeling—perhaps brought on by someone who you know won’t let you down—then you’ll have no problem understanding the earliest meaning of lenient. When it entered English in the mid-1600s, lenient described something soothing—such as a medication—that relieved pain or stress, or otherwise enabled someone to take it easy. For a brief window of time it was even used as a noun, referring to any of various ointments and balms that help heal wounds in the long run. Lenient comes from the Latin verb lenire, meaning “to soften or soothe,” which in turn comes from the adjective lenis, meaning “soft or mild.” The “soothing or easing” sense of lenient is still in use today, but English speakers are more likely to apply it to someone who is lax with the rules (as in “a lenient professor”), who doesn’t mind when someone acts like a certain kind of fool or takes it to the limit one more time.
Examples of lenient in a Sentence
Alan M. Dershowitz, New York Times Book Review, 16 July 1989
He could trust himself, he said … to be more lenient than perhaps his father had been to himself; his danger, he said … would be rather in the direction of being too indulgent …
—Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, 1903
But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out.
—Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847
a teacher who is lenient with students who have misbehaved
Many people felt that the punishment was too lenient.
Manuel Rueda, Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2025
In January 2023, Price rode into office on a broad progressive platform that sought shorter prison sentences, alternatives to prison and more lenient prosecutions of young defendants as a means to combat the nation’s legacy of mass incarceration.
—Jakob Rodgers, Mercury News, 4 June 2025
Indeed, that is the key reason to implement a tariff in the first place: to protect domestic businesses, especially when foreign players operate under conditions that the domestic producers simply cannot compete with, such as more lenient safety standards and no minimum wages.
—Zev Fima, CNBC, 4 June 2025
The decision came eight months after the court rejected a more lenient agreement between Levey Cohen and the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, which polices the behavior of judges on and off the bench.
—Rafael Olmeda, Sun Sentinel, 9 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for lenient
Cite this Entry
“Lenient.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lenient. Accessed 18 Jun. 2025.
Copy Citation
Share