| 释义 |
latency|ˈleɪtənsɪ|
[f. latent a.: see -ency.]
1. a. The condition or quality of being latent; concealed condition, nature, or existence; spec. in Biol. (see quot. 1888).
a1638Mede 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. 1794Paley Evid. (1800) II. ii. vii. 195 Which undesignedness is gathered from their latency, their minuteness, their obliquity [etc.]. 1817Chalmers 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. 1883Tyndall in Times 28 May 5 Every great scientific generalisation..is preceded by a period of latency, to use a medical term. 1883Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. XXXV. 281 On the Variations of Latency in certain Skeletal Muscles of some different Animals. 1888Syd. 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. 1890Nature 11 Dec. 123 The transfer and latency of heat. 1898Allbutt's Syst. Med. V. 173 The extreme latency of the tubercle bacillus postulated by some writers.
b. Psychoanalysis. (See quot. 1934.) Freq. attrib., esp. in latency period.
1910A. A. Brill tr. Freud's Three Contrib. to Sexual Theory ii. 38 It is during this period of total or at least partial latency that the psychic forces develop which later act as inhibitions on the sexual life. Ibid. ii. 39 Sexual activity remains throughout the whole duration of the latency period until the reinforced breaking through of the sexual impulse in puberty. 1913E. Jones Papers on Psycho-Anal. ii. 26 A period of latency follows, usually from the fifth to the tenth years, when the process of sublimation is at its highest activity. 1934H. C. Warren Dict. Psychol. 150/1 Latency period, the period of life between the ages of 4 or 5 and ca. 12 years, which separates the infantile or pregenital sexuality from the beginning of puberty or genital sexuality and in which the sexual manifestations are as a rule less prominent. 1949J. Strachey tr. Freud's Three Ess. Theory of Sexuality ii. 57 It is from Fliess that I have borrowed the term ‘period of sexual latency’. 1960Encounter Jan. 80/2 The life of latency groups in Britain. Ibid. 81/1 These beliefs and customs are passed on entirely within the latency world without any intervention of adults. 1967B. Russell Autobiogr. I. ii. 38, I remember a very definite change when I reached what in modern child psychology is called the ‘latency period’. 1968E. Erikson Identity: Youth & Crisis iv. 156 In postulating a ‘latency period’ which precedes puberty, psychoanalysis has given recognition to some kind of psychosexual moratorium in human development.
2. a. Delay between a stimulus and a response, esp. in muscle; a latent period.
1882Proc. R. Soc. XXXIII. 463 If, after a muscle has been powerfully extended, and while it is returning, by reason of its elasticity, towards its normal condition, a stimulation be applied, the latency may become as short as the 1/200–1/400 second. 1932Jrnl. Physiol. LXXIV. 17 The general interest in the problem of latency increased when it was found, that while recording the action current of the muscle the latent period was absent, or seemed to be absent. 1951H. Davson Textbk. Gen. Physiol. xvii. 483 The latency, as ordinarily recorded, is thus of the order of 3·5 msec. at 23°C; if, however, we take as a measure of the mechanical latent period the time between the stimulus and the moment when the tension [in the muscle] begins to rise from its minimum value, the period is 3·0 msec. 1963Jrnl. Pediatrics LXII. 724 Cry latency is defined as the time which elapses between the moment of painful stimulation and the onset of crying. 1973Jrnl. Genetic Psychol. CXXII. 177 The child was presented with a standard stimulus along with a number of comparison stimuli and told to point to the one that was the same as the standard... E recorded, to the nearest half-second, latency to the first response.
b. Computers. More fully latency time. The delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer, esp. to or from a rotating storage device.
1954First Gloss. Programming Terminol. (Assoc. Computing Machinery) 11 Latency, in a serial storage system, the access time less the word time, e.g. the time spent waiting for the desired location to appear under the drum heads or at the end of an acoustic tank. 1961P. Siegel Understanding Digital Computers xii. 258 The access time consists of the latency time plus the transfer time. The latency represents the amount of time it takes to find the chosen address. 1970O. Dopping Computers & Data Processing x. 145 If the drum makes 3,000 revolutions per minute, each revolution takes 20 milliseconds, and the average latency time becomes 10 milliseconds. |