Latency in tech contexts means the delay between an action and its response, especially in gaming and AI. Not concerning, just tech jargon. If your kid uses it constantly, ask them where they first heard it, not to police their speech but to understand which online community they are in. Most slang of this kind moves through TikTok and group chats, so seeing it in your child's vocabulary just means they are plugged into normal teen internet culture.
latency
Time between sending a request and getting a response.
ˈleɪ.tən.siDocumented since 1970s1970sGen XhistoricalCurrent287 viewsLast reviewed Jun 29, 2026＋ Add a definition
Etymology timeline
Born ~1970 · 1 year of recorded useBoomer / counterculture eraSee decade cohort →
Seen in the wild
BlueskyMay 2026
How OpenAI delivers low-latency voice AI at scale View Article | Join the HN Conversation Summary of HN discussion 🧵👇
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BlueskyMay 2026
OpenAI erklärt ihre Low-Latency Voice-AI-Architektur: Echtzeit-Audio-Routing, globale Lastverteilung, Latenz-Budget-Management. Technisch solider Einblick. Für den Rest: die Maschine redet jetzt halt schneller. Und sk…
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Wikipedia: Epstein–Barr virus
Once EBV's initial lytic infection is brought under control, EBV latency persists in the individual's memory B cells for the rest of their life.
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Wikipedia: Latency (engineering)
Latency, from a general point of view, is a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed.
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Wikipedia: Latency (engineering)
Lag, as it is known in gaming circles, refers to the latency between the input to a simulation and the visual or auditory response, often occurring because of network delay in online games.
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Definitions
Global
+456100%
#1·Apr 24, 2026Global
Time between sending a request and getting a response. In LLMs, typically 500ms–15s depending on model size and output length. Every millisecond matters in agentic loops.
"Latency is the UX story of 2026. Streaming helps; reasoning models hurt."
Origin: Tech / AI / developer industry term.
For parents
Latency in tech contexts means the delay between an action and its response, especially in gaming and AI. Not concerning, just tech jargon. If your kid uses it constantly, ask them where they first heard it, not to police their speech but to understand which online community they are in. Most slang of this kind moves through TikTok and group chats, so seeing it in your child's vocabulary just means they are plugged into normal teen internet culture.
For ESL learners
Latency in technology is the time delay between input and response, commonly measured in milliseconds. Use in tech, gaming, and engineering contexts. Formal equivalent: "response delay," "transmission delay." Common non-native mistake: confusing with bandwidth (data throughput). Latency is about speed of single transactions; bandwidth is about volume per unit time. Read or listen to the word in context several times before trying it yourself; the right register is harder to learn than the dictionary meaning.
Heard in the wild
“How OpenAI delivers low-latency voice AI at scale View Article | Join the HN Conversation Summary of HN discussion 🧵👇”
— Bluesky· May 2026“OpenAI erklärt ihre Low-Latency Voice-AI-Architektur: Echtzeit-Audio-Routing, globale Lastverteilung, Latenz-Budget-Management. Technisch solider Einblick. Für den Rest: die Maschine redet jetzt halt schneller. Und skaliert.”
— Bluesky· May 2026“Once EBV's initial lytic infection is brought under control, EBV latency persists in the individual's memory B cells for the rest of their life.”
“Latency, from a general point of view, is a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed.”
“Lag, as it is known in gaming circles, refers to the latency between the input to a simulation and the visual or auditory response, often occurring because of network delay in online games.”
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Global
#5·May 2, 2026Global
The time delay between a request for data or action and the beginning of the response or execution, often measured to assess system performance.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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IN
#6·May 2, 2026IN
A stage in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of the psychosexual development of children where children become asexual until their sexual desires come back at puberty.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Show 4 more dictionary-style senses (imported)
Global
#2·May 2, 2026Global
Concealment; the state of being latent; the state of being hidden.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Global
#3·May 2, 2026Global
Dormancy; the state of being inactive.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Global
#4·May 2, 2026Global
The delay between a stimulus and the response it triggers in an organism.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Global
#7·May 2, 2026Global
A delay, an interval between the initiation of something and the occurrence.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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For specific readers
Why is this section here?
Slang is read by different audiences for very different reasons. The For parents view re-explains the term in plain, non-judgemental language so a caregiver can understand what their child means without needing the surrounding subculture. The For English learners view focuses on register (when it's safe to use), formal alternatives, and common mistakes — what a textbook won't teach you.
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Other words near "latency" (L)
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Related terms
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Semantically related
- test-time compute64%
Using more compute at inference time — via longer chain-of-thought, sampling, or verification — to boost model quality without retraining. The OpenAI o1 + Claude extended-thinking paradigm. You pay seconds to gain accuracy.
- reasoning model63%
An LLM trained or configured to produce long chains of internal "thinking" tokens before answering — trading latency for higher accuracy on complex problems. OpenAI's o1 and Claude's extended thinking are examples.