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latent

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Definition potentially existing but not presently evident or active
  • She is unschooled, but I think she has latent talent as an engineer.
latent = potentially existing but not presently active
  • A latent HPV infection reactivated when her immune system weakened with age.
    • latent = existing but not previously evident or active
  • A latent defect lead to a lawsuit.
    • latent = existing, but not evident
  • Now listen to me,' said the dying woman aloud, as if making a great effort to revive one latent spark of energy.
    Dickens, Charles  --  Oliver Twist Or The Parish Boy's Progress
  • It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
    Lord Acton
  • These were of a character to force into germination whatever seeds of hereditary superstition lay latent in my bosom.
    Poe, Edgar Allan  --  Poems
  • It was your own virtue, Jane, rather even than your helplessness which awakened for an instant the latent decency of this degraded man.
    Burroughs, Edgar Rice  --  Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
  • 'Now listen to me,' said the dying woman aloud, as if making a great effort to revive one latent spark of energy.
    Charles Dickens  --  Oliver Twist
    • latent = potentially existing but not presently evident or active
  • Who, then, fanned this latent hate into fury?
    Richard Wright  --  Native Son
    • latent = potentially existing but not presently evident or active
  • And, later on, other forms of cancer besides leukemia, with longer periods of latency, were showing up at higher than normal rates:
    John Hersey  --  Hiroshima
    • latency = the amount of time before something that exists is evident or active
  • As though I were beginning to be able to use that power I feel I've got inside me–that extra, latent power.
    Aldous Huxley  --  Brave New World
    • latent = potentially existing but not presently evident or active
  • The latent uneasiness in Darnay's mind was roused to vigourous life by this letter.
    Charles Dickens  --  A Tale of Two Cities
    • latent = potentially existing but not presently active
  • Max frowned and searched his friend's face for any indication of a chink in the armor, a latent willingness to share.
    Henry H. Neff  --  The Fiend And The Forge
    • latent = potentially existing but not presently evident or active
  • According to the best current estimates, about two billion people, one-third of humanity, have tb bacilli in their bodies, but the disease tends to remain latent.
    Tracy Kidder  --  Mountains Beyond Mountains
    • latent = existing but not presently active
  • ...and there was a certain strained hospitality in the way both the faculty and students worked to get along with the leathery recruiting officers who kept appearing on the campus. There was no latent snobbery in us; we didn't find any in them. It was only that we could feel a deep and sincere difference between us and them,
    John Knowles  --  A Separate Peace
    • latent = hidden (potentially existing, but not active)
  • He had detected the latent sensuality, which unfolded under his delicate sense of her nature's requirements like a torpid, torrid, sensitive blossom.
    Kate Chopin  --  The Awakening
    • latent = potentially existing but not presently evident or active
  • Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the last latent remnants of Buck's ferocity.
    Jack London  --  The Call of the Wild
    • latent = potentially existing but not presently evident or active
  • That would indicate a rather powerful latent talent, if it was manifesting so clearly even before the transformation.
    Stephenie Meyer  --  Breaking Dawn
    • latent = potentially existing but presently not clearly evident or active
  • they had some latent moral for his own improvement
    Charles Dickens  --  A Christmas Carol
    • latent = potentially existing but not presently evident or active
  • ...has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations,
    Martin Luther King, Jr.  --  Letter from a Birmingham Jail
latent = potentially existing but not presently evident or active

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