Recent means it happened a short time ago and still feels close. A recent photograph, a recent visit to the doctor, recent rain still shining on the road.
How short is short depends on the subject: recent news is a few days old, a recent ice age is ten thousand years. The adverb recently does most of the everyday work — I saw her recently, he recently moved to Bristol. Keep the fixed frames: in recent years, in recent months, recent developments, the most recent one. Recent describes events and things rather than people, so 'a recent arrival' is fine and 'I am recent' is not. And there is no such word as recenter — the comparative is more recent.
1adjectiverecentHappening or made a short time ago.
“A recent survey found the same problem in half the schools.”
2adjectivelatestLatest in a series; the newest so far.
“Install the most recent version before you report the bug.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Recent is Latin recēns, taken into English with barely a change of clothes. The genitive form recentis is where the -ent in the English spelling comes from, which is the same reason English has present, absent and patient.
Latin
recēns
English, today
recent
Latin recēns (genitive recentis).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA