[f. LATENT a.: see -ENCY.] The condition or quality of being latent; concealed condition, nature or existence; spec. in Biol. (see quot. 1888).
a. 1638. Mede, Wks. (1672), V. 921. By the Woman in the Wilderness, I understand the condition of the true Church in respect of her Latency and Invisibility to the eyes of man.
1784. Paley, Evid. (1800), II. II. vii. 195. Which undesignedness is gathered from their latency, their minuteness, their obliquity [etc.].
1817. Chalmers, Astron. Disc., iv. (1852), 93. Beneath the surface of all that the eye can rest upon, there lies the profoundness of a most unsearchable latency.
1883. Tyndall, in Times, 28 May, 5/3. Every great scientific generalisation … is preceded by a period of latency, to use a medical term.
1883. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond., XXXV. 281. On the Variations of Latency in certain Skeletal Muscles of some different Animals.
1888. Syd. Soc. Lex., Latency, a term applied to certain dispositions, powers, capabilities, or faculties, which may lie concealed in a plant, an animal, or a race, and only become manifest when the necessary conditions for their development are supplied.
1890. Nature, in Dec., 123. The transfer and latency of heat.
1898. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., V. 173. The extreme latency of the tubercle bacillus postulated by some writers.
