I've often been irritated by the construction of the following ungrammatical sentences, when you want to convey the mening that someone is dead, especially by people who should know better:
1. "My father is (now) late".
2. "Mr. John is (now) late". etc
So, I threw the question in Quora, an online community that contains experts in all fields of human endeavour, who answer questions on all subjects. Instantly, I got several answers to my query from several experts. And none of the answers say the construction is grammatically correct.
Here are a sample of the responses:
1. Evelyn Elwell Uyemura, a Natural-born US citizen, who lived in Maine, Massachusetts, Alabama, Tennessee, Illinois, California, and who has lived in Los Angeles since 1987, Professor at El Camino College, MA Linguistics & Teaching English as a Foreign Language, TEFL, has this to say to my question:
Question:
Is it correct to say, "My father is now late", meaning my father is dead?
Answer:
No. You can say My father is (now) deceased. Or My late father….
2. Richard C. DeArmond, retired Professor at Simon Fraser University, Ph.D in Linguistics and Slavic Linguistics, University of Chicago.
Answer:
No. This is one of the few strange adjectives that must precede the noun that they are modifying. Your sentence can mean only that he is tardy.
3. Elizabeth Emond, retired Editor-In-Chief, Ph.D in Textual Criticism & 19th Centuary Literature.
Answer:
No; “late" only works in that sense if it precedes a noun: my late father, the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the late great Harry Houdini.
You can say that your father is deceased, or dead; or say that he has “passed,” or “passed on,“ or “passed away.”
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