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)
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)