of late
- idiom
- Speaker, much focus of late has been on children returning safely to school.
- become of late
- much of late
The world has become such a mean spirited place of late.
- The world has become such a mean spirited place of late.
- Now we've spoken to Muldrow of late
- It seems there's no savor in my herbs of late.
- And so resistance is like of late has been the thing that I just started doing.
- And, you know, see these terrible burning of forests in Brazil of of late hopefully changing now.
- Good old pseudoscience, which has become a friend to the the show of late and then its relationship to Michael's project.
Examples
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My nephew has been very strange of late.
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That surprises me, 'cause we haven't been getting on as of late.
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Most believe that the price that had to be paid of late for freedom was probably too high.
Academic text (1992) -
Of late, I cannot get the cops out of my mind.
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I haven't seen you coming around to church much of late.
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The cathedral had become a refuge of late, a place of retreat when he needed time alone.
Fiction book (1999) -
More often, though, and especially of late, it felt like a monstrous invasion of her privacy.
Fiction book (1995) -
He'd never been much of a reader, and his life of late had provided no time for books.
Fiction book (1996) -
You know, l've been pretty antisocial of late, but it's really great to have surprise guests here.
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I've been feeling a bit anxious of late due to the changes at work.
Synonyms
A short time before now
In the period just before now
Recently, in the past few weeks or months
In the recent past
Antonyms
How Recent
Surface Forms
Morphology
of + late
The meaning 'recently' is directly related to the word 'late' (i.e. occurring at a later time), so a learner who knows 'late' can often infer the sense. However, the construction 'of + late' is a fixed, somewhat formal adverbial phrase and the prepositional linking is not a fully productive compositional pattern for learners, so understanding is only partially predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Of late comes from older English when late could mean 'recent' and the small word of showed it was about a time. So of late came to mean 'recently'.