Tardy means later than it should be. A tardy reply, tardy payment, tardy in responding.
It is formal and faintly reproachful — a tardy response is one that came too late to be much use. In American schools tardy is the official word for a late pupil and appears on registers, which is where most people meet it. In British English it is rare and literary. Note that tardy comes from the Latin for slow, which also gives retard and tardigrade, the slow-stepping water bear.
1adjectivetardyLater than it should be.
“The council apologised for its tardy response to the flooding.”
tardy is a quality of lateness.
French tardif comes from Latin tardus, slow, of obscure origin. Retard and tardigrade — the slow-stepper — come from the same slowness.
Latin
tardīvus
French
tardif
English, today
tardy
From an earlier tardive, from French tardif, from Latin tardīvus, from Latin tardus (“slow”, “sluggish”), of obscure origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA