means The delay between asking a system to do something and seeing it respond, usually measured in milliseconds.

from From Latin 'latens, latentem,' the present participle of 'latere,' meaning 'to lie hidden' — the same root that gives us 'latent.' For centuries it described things lurking unseen (latent heat, latent disease), and only in the modern era did engineers borrow it for the hidden gap that sits quietly between cause and effect in networks and machines.