late — OET · Shobdo

late

adjective

1 the train was one and a half hours late | he was late for work:

behind time, behind schedule, behind, behindhand;

not on time, unpunctual, tardy, running late, overdue, long-overdue, delayed, long-delayed, belated;

slow, dilatory.

▷antonyms punctual, early, fast.

2 her late husband:

dead, deceased, departed, lamented, passed on/away, lost, expired, gone, extinct, perished.

▷antonyms alive, existing.

3 he was Minister for Education in the late government:

previous, preceding, former, past, prior, earlier, as was, sometime, one-time, ex-, erstwhile, old, defunct, precedent, foregoing, no longer extant;

French ci-devant;

formal quondam;

archaic whilom.

▷antonyms current.

adverb

1 she had arrived late:

behind schedule, behind time, behindhand, unpunctually, belatedly, tardily, at the last minute, at the tail end;

dilatorily, slowly, recently.

▷antonyms early, betimes.

2 I was working late:

after hours, after office hours, overtime, past the usual finishing/stopping/closing time.

3 I won't have you staying out late:

late at night, till the early hours of the morning;

informal till the wee small hours, till all hours;

British, informal until stupid o'clock.

□ of late

she'd been drinking too much of late:

recently, lately, latterly, in the past few days, in the last couple of weeks, in recent times;

newly, freshly, not long ago.

late Oxford Dictionary of English