EARLY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Early

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/ˈərli/ Listen

Early

adjective

(compar. earlier; superl. earliest)

1.

At or near the beginning of a period of time or course of events or before the usual or expected time. "An early warning" , "Early diagnosis" , "An early death" , "Took early retirement" , "An early spring" , "Early varieties of peas and tomatoes mature before most standard varieties"

2.

Being or occurring at an early stage of development. "Early forms of life" , "Early man" , "An early computer"

3.

Belonging to the distant past. Synonyms: former, other. "Former generations" , "In other times"

4.

Very young.

5.

Of an early stage in the development of a language or literature. "Early Modern English is represented in documents printed from 1476 to 1700"

6.

Expected in the near future.

adverb

1.

During an early stage. Synonym: early on.

2.

Before the usual time or the time expected. Synonyms: ahead of time, too soon. "The house was completed ahead of time"

3.

In good time. Synonym: betimes.

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WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University

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"Early" Quotes from Famous Books

... having got that matter settled in his mind, it was lucid on the late catastrophe, and they walked home slowly, discussing it in every bearing. Before parting at the Physician's door, they both looked up at the sunny morning sky, into which the smoke of a few early fires and the breath and voices of a few early stirrers were peacefully rising, and then looked round upon the immense city, and said, if all those hundreds and thousands of beggared people who were yet asleep could only know, as they two spoke, the ruin that impended over them, ...

— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Greek a form or an image. The word signified in early philosophical use the archetype or primal image which the Platonic philosophy supposed to be the model or pattern that existing objects imperfectly embody. This high sense has nearly disappeared from the word idea, and has been largely appropriated by ideal, tho something ...

— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... in that an imperious conviction, and the commands of my nature as total and irresistible as those which make the sea flow, or the globe revolve. But of this supplementary volume, I confess I am not so certain. Having from early manhood abandon'd the business pursuits and applications usual in my time and country, and obediently yielded myself up ever since to the impetus mention'd, and to the work of expressing those ideas, it may be that mere habit has got dominion of me, when there is no real need of saying ...

— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... early into the hamlet of Viper, bedraggled with travel. He knew that among the men about him must be at least several accomplices to the conspiracy which he sought to defeat. He had been in Coal City for only a few ...

— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... nigh on seven years ago, when I was living in one of the districts of the J. province, on the estate of Bielokurov, a landowner, a young man who used to get up early, dress himself in a long overcoat, drink beer in the evenings, and all the while complain to me that he could nowhere find any one in sympathy with his ideas. He lived in a little house in the orchard, and I lived in the old manor-house, in a huge pillared ...

— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

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