laid-back - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From U.S. slang. The verbal phrase lay back is attested from the late 1950s, whereas the adjectival form emerged in print in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Presumably originally a metaphor—literally, “sitting in a tilted‐back chair”, a relaxed posture.

laid-back (comparative more laid-back, superlative most laid-back)

  1. Relaxed and easy‐going; demonstrating an absence of stress or worry.
    Synonyms: easygoing, unconcerned; see also Thesaurus:carefree, Thesaurus:calm
    • 1973 July 28, Melody Maker, page 36, column 2:
      This hit‐writer of the early 60s came out with a highly contemporary style which fitted the fashionable term ‘laid‐back’, and her Tapestry album zoomed up to become one of the three biggest‐selling LPs of all time.
    • 2010, Mary Roach, “You Go First: The Alarming Prospect of Life Without Gravity”, in Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 90:
      The V‐2’s directional system was notoriously erratic. In May 1947, a V‐2 launched from White Sands Proving Ground headed south instead of north, missing downtown Juarez, Mexico, by 3 miles. The Mexican government’s response to the American bombing was admirably laid back. General Enrique Diaz Gonzales and Consul General Raul Michel met with United States officials, who issued apologies and an invitation to come to “the next rocket shoot” at White Sands. […]
    • 2019, Susan Levenstein, Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome, page 6:
      You have to accept the deliberate unspeed of Italian timetables if you want the right to be liberated by their correspondingly laid‐back lifestyle.