When you're talking about two things, latter means the second one you mentioned. If someone says “I like both soccer and basketball, but I prefer the latter,” they mean basketball, since it came later in the sentence.

The word helps you refer back to something without repeating yourself. Imagine a teacher saying, “You can write about dolphins or sharks. The latter are actually fish, not mammals.” She means sharks, the second option. It's like pointing backward in a conversation: latter always points to the thing mentioned last.

The opposite word is former, which refers to the first thing mentioned. So if your friend says, “I'm deciding between pizza and tacos. The former sounds good today,” she means pizza.

You'll often see latter in phrases like “the latter half” or “the latter part,” meaning the second or final portion of something. The latter half of a movie is everything after the middle point. A student might find the latter part of a school year goes faster than the beginning.