late

英 [le?t] 美[let]

反義詞

CET4TEM4考研CET6高頻詞基本詞匯

比較級:?later;最高級:?latest;名詞:?lateness;

late 晚的

來自PIE*led,慢的，疲倦的，來自PIE*le,放開，松開，松軟，詞源同late,lenient.引申詞義慢的，晚的。

late: late: [OE] English and Dutch (with laat) are the only modern European languages to use this word to express the idea of ‘behind time’. It comes from an Indo-European base *lad- ‘slow, weary’, which also produced Latin lassus ‘tired’ (source of English alas [13] and lassitude [16]). In prehistoric Germanic this gave *lataz ‘slow, sluggish’.

Its English descendant late originally meant ‘slow’ (and the related German lass still means ‘lazy’), but although this survived dialectally into the 19th century, in the mainstream language ‘delayed’ had virtually replaced it by the 15th century. From the same ultimate Indo-European source come English lease, let, and liege.
=> alas, lassitude, last, lease, let, liege
late (adj.): Old English l?t "occurring after the customary or expected time," originally "slow, sluggish," from Proto-Germanic *lata- (cognates: Old Norse latr "sluggish, lazy," Middle Dutch, Old Saxon lat, German la? "idle, weary," Gothic lats "weary, sluggish, lazy," latjan "to hinder"), from PIE *led- "slow, weary" (cognates: Latin lassus "faint, weary, languid, exhausted," Greek ledein "to be weary"), from root *le- "to let go, slacken" (see let (v.)).

The sense of "deceased" (as in the late Mrs. Smith) is from late 15c., from an adverbial sense of "recently." Of women's menstrual periods, attested colloquially from 1962. Related: Lateness. As an adverb, from Old English late.

3. Most late developers will catch up with their friends.: 大多數身材發育遲緩者都會趕上他們的朋友。

5. Through some unfortunate accident, the information reached me a day late.: 由于發生了不幸的意外，我知道消息的時候已經晚了一天。