How to Use latent in a Sentence

latent

1 of 2 adjective
  • Next is the latent stage, where there are no signs of infection.
    — Carolyn L. Todd, SELF, 28 May 2019
  • Pujols had drawn a walk and showed off some latent speed by stealing second base.
    — Maria Torres, Los Angeles Times, 19 Aug. 2019
  • Someone else sets off a latent dirty bomb in space and our satellites are taken out.
    — Kristina Libby, Popular Mechanics, 10 Dec. 2019
  • But in the new film, this often latent sense of alienation becomes central and takes on a new tone.
    — Brandon Yu, San Francisco Chronicle, 26 June 2020
  • For example, leaking pipes in the walls would be a latent defect.
    — Gary Singer, Sun Sentinel, 9 Mar. 2023
  • The team winning gave a crowd that was always latent the cover to assemble.
    — Vibhas Ratanjee, Forbes.com, 26 June 2026
  • Something about the lounges inflamed a latent sense of righteousness.
    — Zach Helfand, New Yorker, 24 Nov. 2025
  • There’s a latent metaphor here, waiting to explode into drama.
    — Julia M. Klein, Philly.com, 5 June 2018
  • Perhaps those latent rivulets reside in machines.
    — Thomas Moynihan, Big Think, 20 Aug. 2025
  • The suit also states that no latent fingerprints were recovered from the knife nor the knife’s sheath.
    — Danny McDonald, BostonGlobe.com, 2 June 2018
  • When the immune system drops its guard, these latent viruses can start replicating again.
    — Alice Park, Time, 2 July 2019
  • Namely, when will the nation tire of playing Russian roulette with guns and the latent killers who walk among us?
    — Phillip Morris, cleveland.com, 4 Mar. 2018
  • Speech is latent as well as actualized with a potency far greater than any atomic bomb.
    — Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 8 Dec. 2023
  • Howe recently had a baby and fears a latent raisin-handing-out gene may be getting ready to show itself.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 28 Oct. 2019
  • Peso Pluma clearly knows how to hear the latent right-now in the music of yesterday.
    — Chris Richards, Washington Post, 27 Aug. 2023
  • There’s always a potential that there’s a latent problem later on.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 7 Nov. 2023
  • In touting the gains from the border closure, however, its latent costs should not be ignored.
    — Stephen Onyeiwu, Quartz Africa, 28 Oct. 2019
  • Tiang’s play often teases out the issues of identity latent in such moments.
    — Han Zhang, The New Yorker, 27 Oct. 2023
  • That usable form is known as a latent space, or a compact array in computer programming terms.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 5 Dec. 2023
  • About a quarter of the world’s population has such latent TB.
    — The Economist, 14 Dec. 2019
  • This also speaks to a latent tension between the royal family and the media.
    — Alexander Smith, NBC News, 13 Mar. 2024
  • There has been a continuous, latent danger of an attack in the whole of Germany.
    — Zeke Turner, WSJ, 7 Apr. 2018
  • Use your latent magic to shift your public persona as the moon and Pluto harmonize.
    — Usa Today, USA Today, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Routine screening is vital in catching latent TB, which can lie dormant in the body for decades.
    — Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb. 2026
  • The hidden state problem creates latent risks that most security teams haven't fully grasped.
    — Nishanth Prakash, Forbes.com, 20 Jan. 2026
  • There's no need to clutter up the crowded latent space with information that doesn't change from one image to another.
    — Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, 16 Dec. 2019
  • The pandemic contained but did not eliminate the risk of a latent social explosion.
    — Fox News, 28 June 2022
  • No single game moves more money or draws more bettors, so if there’s latent luck in your system, the Super Bowl will find it.
    — J.j. Bailey, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2026
  • Many of us grew up camping in a VW bus, sparking both a love of the outdoors and a latent affinity toward life on the road.
    — Megan Barber, Curbed, 9 May 2018
  • The contents of your inbox would change from messages to latent resources, offers, and invitations.
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 2 Aug. 2019

latent

2 of 2 noun
  • Yet, these signals are latent in the data.
    — Nick Burling, Forbes.com, 20 Aug. 2025
  • This is often what people mean by latent anemia.
    — Lucy Notarantonio, MSNBC Newsweek, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Trump’s allies in Congress see the latent threat.
    — Philip Elliott, Time, 10 Mar. 2026
  • Plenty of songs, though, bank on the latent heaviness of goth imagery to charge up a scene.
    — Harry Tafoya, Pitchfork, 19 Feb. 2026
  • Both of them needed the other to unlock their latent promise.
    — Jayson Greene, Pitchfork, 25 Apr. 2026
  • Their projects are a combination of the chefs’ latent passions and the kitchens that gave them space to thrive.
    — Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 May 2021
  • After the election, some of these latent strains in the tactical world became more overt.
    — Rachel Monroe, Wired, 15 Jan. 2021
  • This sculpture explores an idea of latent potential, the past and the future.
    — Nadja Sayej, Forbes, 21 Apr. 2021
  • So will latent cases, where the bacteria remains dormant in the body.
    — Emily Schwing, Anchorage Daily News, 8 May 2022
  • The United States has latent strength across each of these dimensions.
    — Eric Kutcher, Fortune, 2 July 2026
  • Violence is latent there, a reminder of why many others also leave.
    — Carlos Aguilar, IndieWire, 13 May 2026
  • Some researchers want to understand how stress causes latent viruses to reemerge.
    — USA Today, 23 May 2022
  • The latent varicella zoster virus lies dormant in the body after a person has chicken pox.
    — Amy McGorry, FOXNews.com, 27 Oct. 2025
  • One new strategy to get around this involves shocking the latent viruses out of hiding.
    — Anna Funk, Discover Magazine, 13 Apr. 2021
  • For now, the problem of the hop latent viroid has largely fallen to growers themselves.
    — Dan Adams, BostonGlobe.com, 3 Dec. 2022
  • Nicholas Cage has never been better than in this self-parody of his latent career.
    — ELLE, 22 Dec. 2022
  • Those towns were also zones of contradiction and latent conflict.
    — New York Times, 30 Aug. 2021
  • The focus is to look for any latent fingerprints and DNA, the sources said.
    — Bill Hutchinson, ABC News, 11 Sep. 2025
  • Early in the pandemic, my latent desire for an at-home audio sleep aid swelled to an absolute need.
    — Parker Hall, Wired, 20 June 2021
  • The pandemic has ramped up the latent efforts that were in development.
    — Alex Kulitski, Forbes, 8 June 2021
  • The processor then runs calculations in this latent space to predict how the weather will change over time.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 20 Oct. 2025
  • And then it was awakened when [Jay’s character’s wife] died and all of these latent feelings came up to the surface.
    — Danielle Turchiano, Variety, 20 Aug. 2021
  • Cells can only take full advantage of these latent changes, however, when the memory is called to mind again.
    — Quanta Magazine, 2 Nov. 2020
  • Our mission is to discover the latent talent of the subculture.
    — Patrick Frater, Variety, 6 July 2022
  • Both defendants' latent prints were found inside the vehicle.
    — Adam Thompson, CBS News, 7 May 2026
  • And there’s tremendous latent demand — especially in a place where the economy has been strong — for road space.
    — Kara Miller, BostonGlobe.com, 26 Sep. 2022
  • Ray had cancer and Maria was dealing with paralysis on one side of her body due to a latent spinal deformity.
    — Olivia Solon, NBC News, 8 Dec. 2021
  • What is less appreciated is that oil is not Venezuela’s only latent asset.
    — Joel Shulman, Forbes.com, 5 Jan. 2026
  • The disruption of Amy sees Cedric and Jean-Michel face up to their latent sexism.
    — Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 Jan. 2022
  • Though their characters blow hot and cold, her scenes with Johnson in which their latent friendliness comes through are a pleasure to watch.
    — Television Critic, Los Angeles Times, 20 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'latent.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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