latus

Three different words share this spelling, and the corpus mixes all three, which is why the entry looks confused. Latus, lateris, n., third declension, is a side: the flank of a body, a hill or an army, and in the plural latera the ribs, hence latera firma for a strong pair of lungs. A latere, "from the side", gives the papal legate a latere and English lateral, bilateral and collateral.

Latus, lata, latum is a separate adjective, "broad, wide", with comparative latior, adverb late and the abstract noun latitudo. And latus is also the perfect participle of fero, "carried", which is where translate, relate and oblate come from. Only the case endings separate them: lateris and latere belong to the noun, lati and lata to the adjective, and context settles the participle.