On Being Late

I hate being late.  I’d rather be ten minutes early than one minute late.  As you are no doubt aware, not everyone feels the same way.  I have several friends, colleagues, and family members, who are consistently late.  Not so reliably late that I plan on them being late – because even though I expect them to be late, I don’t want to be late on the off chance that they won’t be.  It’s something of a curse and among the reasons I usually carry something to read.  Fortunately, having a phone these days means that there is always something to read.

We all know the standard definition of late:  not on time.  There are others, more or less used and useful.  But I want to focus on a particular definition:  recently deceased, as in “the late President John F. Kennedy.”  See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/us/once-at-kennedys-side-now-at-one-anothers.html and http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/americas-dirty-secret-is-out-readers-on-donald-trumps-g-o-p-success/ My facetious question for years has been “when will he cease being late.”

Let’s play Jeopardy:  to what question are “facetious” and “facetiously” the only answers.

This definition (recently deceased) has been in use since the early 15th century.  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=late  In 1906, the book “Napoleon’s Last Voyages” included a drawing of a house that was labelled “intended for the late Napoleon Bonaparte.”   https://books.google.com/books?id=Chw2AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=%22the+late+napoleon+bonaparte%22&source=bl&ots=XcTx6ewJpg&sig=6TkxptDsEGEw8ac3SVD3oBbIIPo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcmKen18nPAhXD_R4KHeIIBxUQ6AEIKTAE#v=onepage&q=%22the%20late%20napoleon%20bonaparte%22&f=false at page 188.  Napoleon died in 1821, meaning that “late” was used to describe him 85 years after he died.

George Washington is no longer called “the late,” neither are Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  But Freddie Mercury, who died in 1991, is — sometimes.  On September 18, 2016, the Columbus Dispatch included a snippet that referred to Freddie Mercury, “the late singer” of Queen.  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2016/09/18/01-science-briefs.html The New York Times recently referred to Mercury as “the lead singer” of Queen.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/arts/music/freddie-mercury-now-races-around-the-sun.html That one threw me because, according to the standard usage of “the late,” Mercury is too recently deceased to no longer have that label.

The 85-year interval between Napoleon’s death and a reference to his lateness is the longest gap I have found.  If you find a longer one, please let me know.  I don’t know when, but sometime in the next 20 years or so, John F. Kennedy will no longer warrant “the late” label.  It’s not really necessary now.  For one thing, it has been 99 years since Kennedy was born.  For another thing, I’m pretty sure every person who knows who Kennedy was is well aware that he is no longer alive.

Perhaps there should be a rule, something like — a person stops being late when he or she would reasonably have been expected to die based on life expectancy.  In Kennedy’s case, he should have stopped being late about 15-20 years ago.  I have no idea who would police this rule.

“Facetious” is the only word in the English language that has all five vowels (without duplication) in alphabetical order.

I don’t like being late, but I’d rather be late than be “the late.”