What it means
The delay between doing something online and it actually happening, the stutter and freeze of a bad connection. Your character teleports, the video buffers, the call goes choppy, that is lag. It has slipped into everyday talk too, as in my brain is lagging this morning.
Usage examples
"I did not miss the shot, the lag teleported me into the wall."
"Sorry, total brain lag, can you say that again?"
"My Wi-Fi was lagging so hard I opened the app, made tea, and then it finally loaded."
"Don't ask me to do maths before coffee, I'm on pure Monday-morning lag."
Where it comes from
It comes from the older English verb lag, meaning to fall behind or move slower than the rest. Once online gaming and internet chat took off in the 1990s and 2000s, people started using lag for that nasty delay between your input and the screen finally catching up.
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