Early may refer to:
History
- the beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods
- e.g., Early modern Europe
Places:
- In the United States:
- Early, Iowa
- Early, Texas
- Early County, Georgia
People:
- Gerald Early, writer, culture critic and professor
- James M. Early, electrical engineer for whom the Early effect was named
- Joseph Early, congressman from Massachusetts
- Jubal Anderson Early, American Civil War general
- Early Doucet, American football wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals
- Early Wynn, Major League baseball pitcher, elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972
Popular culture:
- Early Cuyler, an anthropomorphic hillbilly squid in The Squidbillies.
- Early Grayce, a sociopath in the film Kalifornia.
- Jubal Early a fictional bounty hunter from the television series Firefly
Other uses:
- Early Christianity
- Early Records, a record label
- Early effect, an effect in transistor physics
Famous quotes containing the word early:
“Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!””
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)