The Late Thomas Jefferson?

January 27, 2010 6:30 AM

What are the guidelines for referring to a deceased individual as "late"?

For instance, does the designation expire? Based on what metric? A particular interval of time? Or the assumption that the death is sufficiently well-known? Does the nature of the audience for your comments dictate the necessity of this designation? Are there other contexts where it is or isn't expected?

Finally, what is being communicated by this usage? Are you informing the listener/reader that the individual you're referring to is no longer alive, or are you simply communicating that you're aware of that fact?

posted by Jeff Howard to Human Relations (12 answers total)

I see it used when the speaker/writer believes that his/her audience may not be aware that the individual being referred to is dead, and that this fact may be relevant to the matter being spoken/written about. In the case, as presented, of Thomas Jefferson, to say "the late" is a waste of words.
posted by HuronBob at 6:38 AM on January 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

Seconding HB. It's a clarification meant in good faith.
posted by rokusan at 6:49 AM on January 27, 2010

'Late' is usually used where the event was fairly recent; the timespan is no more specific than that. And it doesn't just apply to deaths, although that's by far the commonest usage. You can call someone 'the late secretary of the committee', for example, even if they're very much alive.

And I'd agree with HuronBob on his points.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:52 AM on January 27, 2010

For usage, I often turn to Fowler's (in no small part due to the fact that I don't have access to the OED!). Fowler says late is just for the "recently dead" and the examples do not limit its usage to relative unknowns (e.g., "the late Ceausescu" in its example). But how recent? I suppose that's just personal style. I would have no problem with "the late Michael Jackson" but "the late Ronald Regan" makes no sense to me.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:02 AM on January 27, 2010

I think late is only used for, roughly as long as the person in question only has one "immediate sucessor"/ for a person no more than "one generation back" from where we are up to now. For instance if Blair was to off himself tomorrow, it would make sense to refer to him as "the late Prime Minister Tony Blair" while Brown is still in office, by the time the next PM after Brown got in Blair would be "Former Prime Minister Blair, who..."...
posted by runincircles at 7:21 AM on January 27, 2010

O.E. læt "occurring after the customary or expected time," originally "slow, sluggish," from P.Gmc. *latas (cf. O.N. latr "sluggish, lazy," M.Du., O.S. lat, Ger. laß "idle, weary," Goth. lats "weary, sluggish, lazy," latjan "to hinder"), from PIE base *lad- "slow, weary" (cf. L. lassus "faint, weary, languid, exhausted," Gk. ledein "to be weary"). The sense of "deceased" (as in the late Mrs. Smith) is from late 15c., from an adv. sense of "recently." Of women's menstrual periods, attested colloquially from 1962. Related: Lately; lateness.
posted by jckll at 7:25 AM on January 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

I was going to link to jckll's post.

The notion of what counts as recent is both context sensitive (recent in geologic terms is clearly different then recent in terms of computer designs). But, it is also likely to be affected by personal sensibilities about putatively appropriate lengths of time.

As for the information conveyed it seems to me to be similar in usage to "newly elected." You would probably use it primarily to inform your audience of recent developments, but you can also use it appropriately even if you are aware that the audience knows the information. For example, it would be perfectly acceptable to say "the newly elected Mayor has some comments to make" when introducing a recently elected mayor at a breakfast. It would be equally appropriate, it seems, to say "We are here to celebrate the late Mrs. Jones" at the funeral of Mrs. Jones.
posted by oddman at 7:43 AM on January 27, 2010

(e.g., "the late Ceausescu" in its example).

This raises another question: isn't "the late" a matter of courtesy, so isn't there a judgment call about whether someone deserves it? I interpret "the late" to mean, "It would seem improper to mention this person's name without also noting their recent passing." It sounds strange to my ears to refer to "the late Ceausescu" even if he had recently died, considering that it was good riddance. I wouldn't go around referring to "the late Chemical Ali."
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:44 AM on January 27, 2010

This raises another question: isn't "the late" a matter of courtesy...

I always figured it was courtesy toward the reader, not the individual.
posted by griphus at 7:53 AM on January 27, 2010

I think there are at least two separate usages being mentioned here. The one referred to in the question, as in "the late so-and-so," just means recently deceased, and I think it can be used as a gesture of respect to the dead person, as a way of informing the audience, or just as a verbal flourish (or any combination of the above).

does the designation expire? yes.

Based on what metric? A particular interval of time? No particular interval that I know of ...somewhere between five years and a generation.

Or the assumption that the death is sufficiently well-known? I don't think this matters.

Does the nature of the audience for your comments dictate the necessity of this designation? If you're using it to inform them, yes, but not if you're using it for one of the other reasons above.

Are there other contexts where it is or isn't expected? Not that I know of.

The other usage mentioned by a few posters is "the previous one in a series," like "the late police commissioner." I have always thought of this as a distinct usage, and I don't think it needs to be reconciled with the "recently dead" usage -- in fact I think it can even be used for non-human subjects, like calling a city "the late Olympics host."

This dictionary entry treats them separately, although that's not dispositive. The interesting question would be which came first, and did one usage inspire the other?
posted by pete_22 at 8:38 AM on January 27, 2010

Yeah, it strikes me that "the late Ceausescu" would be a decent way to put it in contexts where Ceausescu's being dead is relevant.

I can imagine reading a sentence like this one: "In the days following the coup, violence by the late Ceausescu's supporters continued." And I wouldn't take the author to be praising him — just pointing out that even after he died the miserable sonofabitch had a few shreds of influence left.

This dictionary entry treats them separately, although that's not dispositive. The interesting question would be which came first, and did one usage inspire the other?

The one that jckll quotes upthread suggests that "late" as in "previous" came first.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:54 AM on January 27, 2010

I would use it where it imparts a significant amount of information - if the person died recently, or if the person died and most of their generation are still around. It's a brief, respectful, and formal way of saying "she's dead now, isn't she? yeah..." (or in nebulawindphone's example "he was dead at that point").

If it's useful to the audience, it disambiguates "X was a respected thinker" (and is now considered a crackpot) and "X was a respected thinker" (and is now a dead respected thinker).
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 2:18 PM on January 27, 2010