LATENESS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does lateness mean? 

• LATENESS (noun)
  The noun LATENESS has 1 sense:

1. quality of coming late or later in time

  Familiarity information: LATENESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LATENESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Quality of coming late or later in time

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("lateness" is a kind of...):

timing (the time when something happens)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "lateness"):

posteriority; subsequence; subsequentness (following in time)

Antonym:

earliness (quality of coming early or earlier in time)

Derivation:

late (being or occurring at an advanced period of time or after a usual or expected time)

late (at or toward an end or late period or stage of development)

late (of a later stage in the development of a language or literature; used especially of dead languages)

late (of the immediate past or just previous to the present time)

late (after the expected or usual time; delayed)

 Context examples 

It was no uncommon thing for him to be away for days and nights on end when he was hot upon a scent, so that his lateness caused me no surprise.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Uppercross, the necessity of some one's going to Uppercross; the news to be conveyed; how it could be broken to Mr and Mrs Musgrove; the lateness of the morning; an hour already gone since they ought to have been off; the impossibility of being in tolerable time.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Mr. Woodhouse was soon ready for his tea; and when he had drank his tea he was quite ready to go home; and it was as much as his three companions could do, to entertain away his notice of the lateness of the hour, before the other gentlemen appeared.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

And I showed him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer me to muster.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)