What is the correct way to say "last", "latest", "past", "recent"?
So far I've come up with прошлый, последний, and прошедший, but can't figure out the difference between them. They all seem to overlap in meaning. -- Thanks.

(There's also бывщий (former, ex-) and конечный (final, ultimate), but their meanings seem pretty straight-forward.)

Question

What is the correct way to say "last", "latest", "past", "recent"?
So far I've come up with прошлый, последний, and прошедший, but can't figure out the difference between them.  They all seem to overlap in meaning. -- Thanks.

(There's also бывщий (former, ex-) and конечный (final, ultimate), but their meanings seem pretty straight-forward.)

Answer

1. Прошлый год, прошлый месяц, прошлый семестр, прошлый урок, прошлая встреча. It's often in prepositional case to mark a previous event to the current one (в прошлом году, на прошлой встрече).

2. Прошедший is close to that, but it's a participle which means the emphasis is put on the time elapsed. You often can add an adverb to designate the period of time more accurately or put extra details:
(недавно) прошедшие соревнования
прошедший год ознаменовался... (the year which is just fiished)
прошедшая в Москве встреча между президентами двух стран...

3. Последний has quite a lot of meanings:
- это последняя конфета (больше конфет нет)
- это последняя мода (самая новая мода)
- в последнее время (recently, lately)

Answer

"last", "latest" = generally it's all the same "последний" (the latest in line)
"past" = "прошлый, прошедший" (related to past-now-future paradigm)
"recent" = "недавний, последний" (happened not that much time ago)