latency

noun

la·ten·cy | \ ˈlā-tᵊn(t)-sē

plural latencies

Definition of latency

1 : the quality or state of being latent : dormancy latency is a characteristic common to all members of the troublesome herpes family— Claudia Wallis

2 : something latent writers who know how to evoke these latencies— E. C. Lindeman

3 : a stage of psychosexual (see psychosexual sense 1) development following the phallic (see phallic sense 3) stage that extends from about the age of five or six to the beginning of puberty and during which sexual urges often appear to lie dormant

4 : latent period sense 2

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Examples of latency in a Sentence

the flower bulbs went from latency to full bloom in a matter of days

Recent Examples on the Web

Ten years ago at this very same gaming conference, a company called OnLive promised many of the same things before collapsing roughly five years later after the necessary low-latency tech failed to materialize. — Eric Limer, Popular Mechanics, "Google's 'Stadia' Is the Latest Attack in the War on Games You Can Actually Own," 19 Mar. 2019 As the devices are able to latch onto more of that spectrum simultaneously, both speeds and latency should improve, said another. — Sean Hollister, The Verge, "The first ‘real world’ 5G test was a dud," 5 Dec. 2018 It’s designed to be battery-efficient, while providing high quality audio with low latency. — Dami Lee, The Verge, "Google is developing native hearing aid support for Android," 16 Aug. 2018 Take the machine vision, 3-D mapping and ubiquitous low-latency broadband networks needed to make driverless cars possible. — Holman W. Jenkins, WSJ, "Self-Driving Car Returns to Earth," 30 Nov. 2018 The bad news is that latency is a lot higher, and controller position jittered a lot while moving, especially at high speeds. — Hayden Dingman, PCWorld, "HTC Vive Focus hands-on impressions: No-PC, no-wires VR at a too-steep price," 9 Nov. 2018 Perhaps more importantly, the latency (e.g. time lag) in the transmissions from the serving base stations to the portable users is less than 10 milliseconds, a critical metric where such small delays become indistinguishable to the human brain. — Fortune, "Commentary: How 5G Technology Will Transform the Way We Live," 12 Apr. 2018 Efforts to stream games in the past failed in part because of such hiccups, known as latency. — Sarah E. Needleman, WSJ, "The Tricky—but Potentially Lucrative—Task of Streaming Videogames," 8 Nov. 2018 For those who wear headphones while recording, latency is kept to a minimum as well. — Jeff Dunn, Ars Technica, "The Ars Holiday Gift Guide 2018—good tech for the home and home office," 19 Nov. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'latency.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Last Updated

4 Apr 2019

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The first known use of latency was in 1615

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More Definitions for latency

latency

noun

la·ten·cy | \ ˈlāt-ᵊn-sē

plural latencies

Medical Definition of latency

1 or latency period or latent period

a : the quality or state of being latent especially : the state or period of living or developing in a host without producing symptoms The cellular mechanisms by which viral latency is maintained or viral replication is induced is not known. — Science, 20 June 1986 During this nonreplicating latent period, the virus' home is believed to be the ganglia of nerves serving the area where the herpes lesion initially appeared. — The Journal of the American Medical Association, 11 Nov. 1983

b : the time or period between exposure to a disease-causing agent or process and the onset of symptoms or disease In the worst cases, chronic active hepatitis develops and can lead to cirrhosis of the liver and finally to hepatocellular carcinoma. … Usually the cancer does not develop until after a 30- to 50- year latency period …— Peter Tiollais and Marie-Annick Buenidia, Scientific American, April 1991

2 usually latency period or latency stage : a stage of psychosexual development that follows the phallic stage and precedes the genital stage, extends from about the age of five or six to the beginning of puberty, and during which sexual urges often appear to lie dormant

3 or latent period : the time interval between application of a stimulus and the beginning of an identifiable response (such as muscle contraction) : reaction time