Latex is the milky sap of a tree, made into stretchy gloves. Latex gloves, a latex allergy, natural latex.
It comes from the rubber tree, which is tapped in a spiral cut and yields for decades. Latex allergy is a real and sometimes serious problem, which is why hospitals moved to nitrile gloves. Latex paint is a different thing, using synthetic polymers rather than tree sap.
1nounlatexThe milky sap of the rubber tree, used to make rubber goods.
“Workers cut the bark of the trees so that the white latex drips into cups.”
latex is a substance.
New Latin latex names the fluid, from Latin latex, water or liquid. The rubber sense dates from the nineteenth century.
Latin
latex — water; liquid, fluid
New Latin
latex — clear fluid which is part of a humour or bodily fluid
English, today
latex
Borrowed from New Latin latex (“clear fluid which is part of a humour or bodily fluid”), a later use of Latin latex (“water; liquid, fluid”). Potentially a borrowing from Ancient Greek λᾰ́τᾰξ (“drop of wine”), reformed by analogy to other nouns in -ex. The semantic shift, however, from drop of wine to water is difficult to explain and may indicate that both words originated from a separate language. Perhaps from the same root as Proto-Celtic latis (Old Irish laith (“liquid, beer”), Welsh llad (“beer”)) or Proto-Germanic ladjō- (Old High German letto (“clay, loam”), Old Norse leðja (“mud, dregs”)) or from a qsb-grc language.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA