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early

adjective · adverb · noun

Simple meaning

At or near the beginning of a period of time or course of events or before the usual or expected time.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

urlee

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈɝli

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. At or near the beginning of a period of time or course of events or before the usual or expected time

  2. Arriving a time before expected; sooner than on time.

  3. After but close to the start of a period of time.

  4. Having begun to occur; in its early stages.

  5. In the starting hours of the day.

adverb

  1. Before the usual time or the time expected

  2. Soon; in good time; seasonably.

noun

  1. informal

    A shift (scheduled work period) that takes place early in the day.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: At or near the beginning of a period of time or course of events or before the usual or expected time

Used this way, early is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • primitive , a specialist term, precise but narrower

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Near / arriving

early morningearly stage

Other combinations

early daysearly childhoodearly yearsearly partearly ageearly life

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • early birdnounCompound term

    A person who arrives early before others do.

  • early childhoodnounCompound term

    The early stage of growth or development.

  • early coral rootnounCompound term

    Plant having clumps of nearly leafless pale yellowish to greenish stems bearing similarly colored flowers with white lower lips.

  • early daysnounCompound term

    An early period of development.

  • early morelnounCompound term

    Resembles a thimble on a finger.

  • early-morning hournounCompound term

    An hour early in the morning.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: at

primitiveTechnicalnewoldimmature

Antonyms

Sense: at

late

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.