Dictionary

fashionably late en · ADV

(idiomatic) Arriving behind time to an event which does not normally require one to be punctual.
- Ex-Senator Blount's party of three was fashionably late at the function in Mesa Circle, but in the crush filling the spacious drawing-rooms the hostess and her long line of receiving assistants were still on duty. 1913, Francis Lynde, chapter X, in The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush:
- Well, she's fashionably lean / And she's fashionably late / She'll never rank a scene / She'll never break a date 1967, “Twentieth Century Fox”, in The Doors, performed by The Doors:
- Three hours later—fashionably late, of course—the Stuart party swept in state into their box. 1874, May Agnes Fleming, chapter V, in A Terrible Secret:
- The sofa which she had counted on to hold four looked crowded with three[…] and when the Simpsons came, fashionably late (having only just finished dinner), they had to content themselves with the end of a holland-covered form hired from the baker. 1917, O. Douglas [pseudonym; Anna Masterton Buchan], chapter II, in The Setons: