late (to pretend / let appear) | Norwegian Grammar

late ("to pretend; to let appear") is a verb you will rarely meet on its own — it survives almost entirely inside two fixed expressions, late som (om) ("pretend that") and late til ("appear / seem"). It is worth a dedicated page for two reasons. First, those two idioms are genuinely common in good Norwegian and have no clean single-word English equivalent. Second, late shares its preterite lot and supine latt letter-for-letter with the much more frequent verb la ("to let") — an overlap that confuses even advanced learners until they learn to read the construction rather than the form.

Conjugation

Class: strong (irregular). Auxiliary: ha.

Tense / mood	Norwegian	English
Infinitiv	å late	to pretend / let appear
Presens	later	pretend(s) / appear(s)
Preteritum	lot	pretended / appeared
Perfektum	har latt	have/has pretended
Pluskvamperfektum	hadde latt	had pretended
Futurum	skal/vil late	will pretend
Imperativ	lat!	pretend! (rare)
Presens partisipp	latende	pretending (adjective)

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The forms are late / later / lot / latt. Watch the present: it is later (one t), distinct from the supine latt (double t). The preterite lot carries an o — same vowel as the past of la. There is no æ, ø or å in any form of late; the only spelling care is the single-t later versus the double-t latt.

late som (om) — to pretend

The core idiom. late som introduces a pretence — putting on an appearance that something is true when it is not. It comes in two interchangeable shapes:

late som om
- clause — the fuller form, with the conjunction om: Han lot som om han sov.
late som
- clause — the trimmed form, very common in speech: Han lot som han sov.

Both mean "He pretended (that) he was asleep." The reflexive variant late som ingenting ("act as if nothing happened / play it cool") is a fixed phrase worth memorising whole. Note that the verb inside the clause is usually in the past or present indicative, not a special mood — Norwegian does not require a subjunctive here.

Han lot som om han ikke så meg på gata.

He pretended he didn't see me in the street.

Ikke lat som ingenting — jeg vet at det var deg.

Don't act like nothing happened — I know it was you.

Barna later som om de sover når foreldrene kommer inn.

The kids pretend to be asleep when their parents come in.

Hun har latt som om alt var bra altfor lenge.

She has pretended everything was fine for far too long.

late til — to appear / seem

The second idiom. late til is an impersonal construction — it almost always takes the dummy subject det — and means "it appears / it seems / it looks like." It is more measured and slightly more formal than the plain det ser ut til, and common in weather talk, forecasts, and cautious assessments.

det later til (at)
- clause: Det later til at de har glemt avtalen.
det later til å
- infinitive: Det later til å bli regn.

This is the "let appear" sense hiding in the verb's gloss: something lets itself appear a certain way. Crucially, here late is followed by til, not by a bare infinitive — which is one of the clean tests separating it from la (see below).

Det later til å bli regn i ettermiddag.

It looks like it's going to rain this afternoon.

Det lot til at ingen hadde lest e-posten min.

It seemed that no one had read my email.

Alt later til å gå etter planen, heldigvis.

Everything appears to be going according to plan, fortunately.

The overlap with la — read the construction, not the form

Here is the crux. late and la ("to let") share their entire past paradigm:

Form	la (let)	late (pretend / appear)
Infinitive	la	late
Present	lar	later
Preterite	lot	lot
Supine	latt	latt

The infinitive and present differ (la / lar versus late / later), so in those tenses you can tell them apart at a glance. The trouble is the preterite lot and the supine latt, which are identical. To disambiguate, look at what follows the verb — the construction is unambiguous even when the form is not:

la
- a bare infinitive → "let / allow someone to do": Han lot oss vente = "He let us wait."
late som (om)
- clause → "pretend": Han lot som om han ventet = "He pretended he was waiting."
late til (å) → "appear / seem": Det lot til å bli en lang kveld = "It looked like being a long evening."

So lot + plain infinitive is la; lot som is late; lot til is late. The same logic applies to latt: har latt oss vente (let) versus har latt som ingenting (pretended). The cross-page la entry walks the same distinction from the other side.

Han lot oss vente, men senere lot han som om det ikke var hans skyld.

He let us wait, but later he pretended it wasn't his fault.

Det lot til å bli sent, så vi lot barna sove der.

It looked like getting late, so we let the kids sleep there.

A note on register and cognates

late in its bare, non-idiomatic "pretend" sense (han later seg syk, "he feigns illness") is (literary) to (archaic) today; modern Norwegian routes almost everything through late som and late til. You will also see the unrelated reflexive late seg ("to laze about, lie in") — å late seg en søndag morgen — which is a separate idiom built on the same verb form and worth recognising. As for cognates: late is the Germanic relative of the family that gave English "let" and German lassen; the "pretend" specialisation is a Scandinavian development, so there is no neat English cognate that carries the meaning across — you simply learn late som and late til as units.

På søndager liker jeg å late meg lenge i senga.

On Sundays I like to laze in bed for a long time.

Common Mistakes

❌ Han later som han sov i går.

Tense mismatch — for a past pretence use the preterite lot, not the present later

✅ Han lot som han sov i går.

He pretended he was asleep yesterday.

❌ Det lar til å bli regn.

Incorrect — 'appear/seem' is late til (det later til), not la; lar belongs to la 'let'

✅ Det later til å bli regn.

It looks like it's going to rain.

❌ Han lot oss vente. (om 'pretend')

This means 'he let us wait' (la + infinitive); for 'pretend' you need late som

✅ Han lot som om han ventet på oss.

He pretended he was waiting for us.

❌ Jeg har late som ingenting.

Incorrect — the supine is latt, not late: har latt som ingenting

✅ Jeg har latt som ingenting altfor lenge.

I've been acting like nothing's wrong for far too long.

Key Takeaways

late / later / lot / har latt — strong; lives mainly in two idioms.
late som (om) = pretend (+ clause); late til = appear / seem (impersonal det later til).
Spelling: present later (one t) versus supine latt (double t); no æ/ø/å anywhere.
lot and latt are shared with la ("let") — disambiguate by construction: la
- bare infinitive = let; late som = pretend; late til = appear.
Bare "pretend" late seg syk is (literary/archaic); the reflexive late seg = laze about.

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