Word.ws English Dictionary

late bloomer

late bloomer noun: a person who reaches puberty or who matures comparatively later than is typical.

Noun

late bloomer (plural late bloomers)

  1. (figuratively) A person who reaches puberty or who matures comparatively later than is typical.
    • You can be a normal late bloomer whose progress through puberty hovers on the late side of each normal age range if: It's in your genes. That is, if one or both parents or other relatives were also late bloomers.2003, Kathy McCoy, Charles Wibbelsman, Growing and Changing, Penguin, →ISBN, page 14
  2. (figuratively) A person who enters a romantic relationship or engages in sexual intercourse significantly later in life.
  3. (figuratively) A person who achieves proficiency or success in a field significantly later in life.
    • He was a late bloomer, finding success at 40 in Luc Besson's 1988 film The Big Blue.2010 August 16, Grant Rosenberg, “Jean Reno: Putting the Fun in French Cinema”, in Time, archived from the original on 26 Jan 2011
    • [Harlow:] I'm just a late bloomer (Mmm) / I didn't peak in high school, I'm still out here gettin' cuter (Woo)2021, Lil Nas X, Jack Harlow, et al., “Industry Baby”, performed by Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow
  4. (literally) A flowering plant that blooms later in a growing season than other flowering plants.
    • The great snows that come at the beginning of winter, before there is yet any snow except the perpetual high banks, are best worth while to watch. These come often before the late bloomers are gone and while the migratory birds are still in the piney woods.1903, Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain
    • One of the characteristics of the pawpaw is that it always bears [fruit], yet there is an occasional season when there is only a light crop on account of late frosts, but it generally bears some, as it is a late bloomer.1907, Indiana State Board of Agriculture, Annual Report of the Indiana State Board of Agriculture, page 613

Forms of late bloomer

plurallate bloomers

Questions about late bloomer

What does late bloomer mean?
Late bloomer means a person who reaches puberty or who matures comparatively later than is typical.
What part of speech is late bloomer?
Late bloomer is a noun.
What is the plural of late bloomer?
The plural of late bloomer is late bloomers.

Words near late bloomer in the dictionary

  1. late antique
  2. late antiquity
  3. Late Aramaic
  4. late binding
  5. late blight
  6. late bloomer
  7. late bloomers
  8. Late Bronze Age
  9. Late Bronze Age collapse
  10. late capitalism
  11. late capitalisms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: late bloomer (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-late bloomer.ogg.

Cite this entry: “late bloomer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/late_bloomer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.