Staying up late to write this post, I started thinking of late. Why is it always the late so-and-so, and what does that have to do with not being on time?
Our old friend Proto-Indo-European has the answer, of course. The root *lē- (to slacken), the ancestor of Proto-Germanic *lata- (sluggish, slack, lazy), gave us the Old English læt (*slow, after the expected time). Our words late, latter,1 latest come from the Old English læt, lætra, latost meaning slow, slower, final.
In the mid-1200s, læt took on the meaning of during the latter part of a period of time, and from there came to mean recent by around 1400. In the early 1400s, the late so-and-so attained the sense of the recent so-and-so as an avoidance of the dead so-and-so, which is blunt, to say the least.
Latest, which originally meant most late (as in last,2 final, slowest) gained the meaning of most recent in the 1590s and the sense of the news in 1886.
That's the latest and greatest3 for ya.
Later didn't come along until the middle of the 15th century.
Last is a contraction of latost, the Old English spelling of latest.
Slowest and biggest.