EARLIEST • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Earliest

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/ˈərliəst/ Listen

adjective

earliest adj. Preceding all others in time.

Synonyms: premier, premiere.

Early adj. (compar. earlier; superl. earliest)

In advance of the usual or appointed time; in good season; prior in time; among or near the first; opposed to late; as, the early bird; an early spring; early fruit. "Early and provident fear is the mother of safety." "The doorsteps and threshold with the early grass springing up about them."

Coming in the first part of a period of time, or among the first of successive acts, events, etc. "Seen in life's early morning sky." "The forms of its earlier manhood." "The earliest poem he composed was in his seventeenth summer."

Early English (Philol.) See the Note under English.

Early English architecture, the first of the pointed or Gothic styles used in England, succeeding the Norman style in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Synonyms: Forward; timely; not late; seasonable.

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Etymology of 'Earliest'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Earliest" Quotes from Famous Books

... cat from my bag already into his sympathetic and receptive bosom, I decided to confide to him my hard case in its entirety, and so made him a secret sign that I desired some private confabulations at his earliest conveniency, which he observing, after the termination of the match, came towards the remote bench whereon I was forlornly moping, and sat ...

— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... felt that his country demanded his best energies, and though he was ready and willing to give himself and his son to her in her hour of need, he felt that his first duty was to his own family, within reasonable limits; and his earliest thoughts were directed to the safety of his daughter, and then to the welfare of his ...

— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic

... to the effect that owners of houses or tenements in that town occupied by blacks of the character complained of be requested to use all their rightful means to clear their premises of such occupants at the earliest possible period; and that it be recommended that such proprietors refuse to rent the same thereafter to any person of color whatever.[24] In New York Negroes were excluded from places of amusement and public conveyances and segregated in places of worship. In the draft riots which occurred ...

— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson

... number of rats in the hold, for being sagacious animals they are said always to desert a ship likely to go down. Probably, being inconvenienced by the water in the regions to which they are quickly driven when discovered, they take their departure on the earliest opportunity. I have known ships to founder with rats on board, so that they cannot be said to be a preventative to ...

— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... The earliest recognised method of arriving at an estimate of the Earth's geological age is based upon the measurement of the collective sediments of geological periods. The method has undergone much revision from time to time. Let us briefly review ...

— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

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