Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Earlier   /ˈərliər/   Listen
Earlier

adverb
1.
Earlier in time; previously.  Synonym: before.  "As I said before" , "He called me the day before but your call had come even earlier" , "Her parents had died four years earlier" , "I mentioned that problem earlier"
2.
Comparatives of 'soon' or 'early'.  Synonym: sooner.  "Came earlier than I expected"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Earlier" Quotes from Famous Books



... just estimate of this claim it will be necessary to recur to the cause which prevented its admission, or the admission of any part thereof, at an earlier day. It will be recollected that when a call was made on the militia of that State for service in the late war, under an arrangement which was alike applicable to the militia of all the States and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... the folio on Weald, of course, but as the ship swam onward through emptiness he went through it again. The last medical inspection had been only perfunctory. Twelve years earlier—instead of three—a Med Ship had landed on Weald. There had been official conferences with health officials. There was a report on the birth rate, the death rate, the anomaly rate, and a breakdown of all reported communicable diseases. But that was all. There were no ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... after the French invasion naturally tempted her seamen to transfer their skill to the rising powers of western Europe. Among such emigrants was John Cabot, a Venetian, who settled in Bristol, and then, after a return to his own country, again revisited his adopted city. Of his earlier history and personal character we know nothing. Our own records furnish nothing but the scanty outlines of his career, and the one glimpse of light which is thrown upon the living man is due to a lately discovered ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... saddened by his love for Rosa," Edwin would have been one of those characters Dickens loved to draw—a character entirely changed from a once careless, almost trivial self, to depth and earnestness. "All were to join in changing the ways of dear old Grewgious from the sadness and loneliness of the earlier scenes" in the story, "to the warmth and light of that kindly domestic life for which, angular though he thought himself, his true and genial nature fitted him so thoroughly." This attempt to solve The ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... Earlier even than the day of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, Casimir Delavigne had the glory of stirring the heart of France. He had the added merit of maintaining, after Beaumarchais and before Emile Augier, the dignity of high comedy. Ingenious scenes of life, lively and spirited details, grace ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... I now lay before the board a copy. The first of the accompanying letters from Mr. Markham arrived at a time when a severe return of my late illness obliged me, by the advice of my physicians, to leave Calcutta for the benefit of the country air, and prevented me from bringing it earlier before ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of the work as far as Branch III. Title 8, about the middle, and from Branch XIX. Title 23, near the beginning, to Branch XXX. Title 5, in the middle. Making allowance for variations of spelling and sundry minor differences of reading, by no means always in favour of the earlier scribe, the Berne fragments are identical with the corresponding portions of the Brussels manuscript, and it is therefore safe to assume that the latter is on the whole an accurate transcript of ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown

... might mean the loss of all the passenger business garnered for that trip; for competition was keen, and the ticket agents, selling on a commission of one dollar per ticket, would switch the traffic to some other vessel sailing earlier rather than have the tickets canceled and thus lose ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... an hour earlier than I had to," she told him, "'cause I thought maybe you'd be up and might like to see the chicken yard. No wonder you're hungry if you didn't have any lunch. Your Grandma has some saved for you on a big plate. ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White

... mourners on the front pew of Rose-of-Sharon Church on the occasion of the preaching of the funeral of the faithfully mourned and long-lamented Sophy-Sophia, whose hour of posthumous honor had at length arrived. The obsequies in her memory had been fixed for an earlier date, but in deference to the too-recent arrival of her "nearest of kin" was then too young to attend, they had been deferred by Tamar's request, and it is safe to say that no child was ever brought forward with more pride at any family gathering than was the tiny ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... than tariff protection is required by American agriculture. To the farmer has come the earlier and the heavier burdens of readjustment. There is actual depression in our agricultural industry, while agricultural prosperity is absolutely essential to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... bounded by an unknown beginning and headed for a concealed destination? It was sweet to be, but whether good or evil lay in the unseen, who knew? Uneasiness, which did not quite displace my earlier ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... bore. The only thing that was clearly flattering was the fact that the Promiscuous rarely published fiction. He should therefore be associated with a deviation from a solemn habit, and that would more than make up to him for a phrase in one of Mr. Locket's inexorable earlier notes, a phrase which still rankled, about his showing no symptom of the faculty really creative. "You don't seem able to keep a character together," this pitiless monitor had somewhere else remarked. Peter Baron, ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James

... left her, and she began to remember her son's youth and the charming, boyish things about him. Perhaps among his new friends some would love him and help him where she and his earlier friends had failed. There was Virgil, for example. He was older, but Propertius's enthusiasm for him seemed unbounded. He had pored over the Georgics when they came out, and only the other day he had told her that the poet was at work on an epic that would be ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observed that he "had been entrapped into going there!" Some one lamenting the lack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, as compared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitary but refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other day at an eviction in Kerry,[18] of a patriotic priest who chained himself to a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... part of the ancient banat of Matchva, which was in the earlier periods of Servian and Hungarian history so often a source of conflict and contention, we approached distant grey hills, which gradually rose from the horizon, and, losing their indistinctness, revealed a chain so charmingly accidented, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... of Mrs. Haywood's life and writings has been Sir Sidney Lee's article in the "Dictionary of National Biography," which adds much information not found in the earlier notices in Baker's "Biographia Dramatica" and Chalmers' "Biographical Dictionary." The experienced palates of Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mr. Austin Dobson have tested the literary qualities respectively of the earlier and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... them all like my walk to "Number Four." West Point had enough natural beauty to satisfy any one, I thought, even for all summer; and there I had besides what I had not elsewhere and never had before, a companion. All my earlier friends were far older than I, or beneath me in station. Preston was the single exception; and Preston and I were now widely apart in our sympathies; indeed, always had been. Mr. Thorold and I talked to each other on a level; we ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... was tempted to choose Me a wife in my earlier years, And the grief, when I think that she didn't refuse, Has ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... (Coniferae) and those which inhabit woods of other trees, for these two descriptions of forests may be rightly regarded, as to their fungaceous growths, as two different regions. Beneath the shade of Coniferae, fungi are earlier in their appearance; so much so, that it often happens they have attained their full development when their congeners in forests of non-resinous trees have scarcely commenced their growth. In woods of the latter ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron that had stuck by us; and breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers.—It was about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan. Stuart made that curious confession to us, that he had "never deliberately walked into an Exhibition at Somerset ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... intention to be up and doing early on the following morning, but my slumbers proved so profound, that I did not wake until about eight; on arising, I again found myself the sole occupant of the apartment, my more alert companion having probably risen at a much earlier hour. Having dressed myself, I descended, and going to the stable, found my horse under the hands of my friend the ostler, who was carefully rubbing him down. 'There ain't a better horse in the fair,' said he to me, 'and as you are one of us, and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... kindly smile. "A fatal admission for a member of the Opposition," he said. "But I was looking for you earlier in the day, Chilcote. There is something behind this Persian affair. I believe it to be a mere first move on Russia's part. You big trading people ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... a 12mo brochure in the "Theatrical Library" in the same year. The original five-act version was first published as Mercadet, in Le Pays, August 28, 1851 (probably called forth by the presentation of the play four days earlier), and then appeared in book form, as Le Faiseur, from the press of Cadot, in 1853. It is of interest to note that the play was not presented till over a year subsequent to Balzac's death. The presented version in three acts has generally been regarded as the more acceptable, ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden

... the page took a deal of pains to let him see how much out of the fashion it was at the Court. But Spare answered Tinseltoes as he had done the King; and at last, finding nothing better would do, the page got up one fine morning earlier than his master, and tossed the leathern doublet out of the back window into a lane, where Spy found it and ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne

... of Paris was the legitimate successor of that assembly in which, in the earlier stage of the national existence, the great vassals came together to render homage to the lord paramount and aid him by their deliberations. This feudal parliament was transformed into a judicial parliament toward ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... the best, earlier, larger, and better, than the preceding; ripens first of September. The same varieties are excellent for the South, where they ripen considerably earlier. The following selection of choice, hardy nectarines for a small garden, is ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... should be taught very slowly and very thoroughly, as it demands much more time than any of the earlier periods. A clear understanding of the Constitution is of the most practical value, not merely to enable one to comprehend the later history, but also to enable one to understand present duties. ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing

... before she saw Booth that day, or even before Booth knew that the President would be at the theatre that night, Mrs. Surratt had disclosed her intention to go to Surrattsville, and had she been one moment earlier in her start she would not have seen Booth at all. All these things furnish powerful presumptions in favor of the theory that, if she delivered the message at all, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... once graceful marble beauty and the incense-steeped stones of sacrifice nothing remained but moss-grown shapeless fragments, buried beneath a pall of leaves by twice a thousand autumns. Yet the ancient sanctity still rested on the nameless, pathless woods; the breath of an earlier time, of a younger season of the earth, seemed to lie yet upon the untroubled forest ways; the whisper of the unseen waters had a dream-like, unreal cadence; in the deep shade, in the warm fragrance and the heavy gloom, there was a voluptuous yet mournful charm—the world seemed so far, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... about the 1s of June, at which time even then is an abundance of snow but a Scanty Subsistance may be had for the horses- we Should not foward our homeward journey any by reaching the Rocky mountains earlier than the 1st of June which we can effect by Setting out from hence by ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... struggled, for rough indeed was the road for them; and so came they up out of the gap on to the open hill-side, a great shoulder of the heath sloping down from the north, and littered over with big stones, borne thither belike by some ice-river of the earlier days; and one great rock was in special as great as the hall of a wealthy goodman, and shapen like to a hall with hipped gables, which same the men of the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... the group next to the Dakota, is one of those that least resembles the Dakota in vocabulary. Some of the features often assigned as peculiarities of American languages were according to Bopp and Schleicher features of the I. E. languages in their earlier stages. Of most other features said to characterize American languages I find in Dak. but faint traces. The Dak. does have verbs nearly synonymous with go, walk, eat, drink, strike, etc. It is well supplied ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson

... contrary, they will be found to be almost entirely new. They are contributions, representative of the patient gleanings of years, to the geologic records of Scotland; and exhibit, in a more or less perfect state, no inconsiderable portion of all the forms yet detected in the rocks of her earlier Palaeozoic ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... are of any age, at the fifth or sixth leaf. Not much heat is needed generally, but when the stoning period is passed, the ripening process may be hastened by a higher temperature. The house may be closed at an earlier hour if necessary. Avoid extremes. As the fruits ripen, cease gradually to syringe, but keep the house moist by sprinkling water over the paths, etc. Choose the choicest dessert sorts: Early Transparent, Dennistoun's Superb, July Greengage, ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... jewels, gold, and silver, directly brought to Europe, and in bills upon the British and foreign companies, you will scarcely think the matter overrated. If we fix the commencement of this extraction of money from the Carnatic at a period no earlier than the year 1760, and close it in the year 1780, it probably will not amount to a great deal less than twenty ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... o'clock the next morning when Ellen opened her eyes. Breakfast had been served a half-hour earlier, Jane and Bessie having cooked some eggs, which Bessie ate alone, since Thaddeus and Liscomb were compelled to take the eight-o'clock train to town, hungry and forlorn. Liscomb was very good-natured about it to Thaddeus, but his book-keeper had a woful tale to tell of his employer's irritability ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... moved in his thoughts a little towards that Ireland to which, for all his separatism, he so inseparably belongs, the ring of blockhouses, called Orange Lodges, was drawn tighter to strangle his wanderings. Mr Robert Lynd in his "Home Life in Ireland," a book which ought to have been mentioned earlier in these pages, relates the case of a young man who was refused ordination in the Presbyterian Church because he had permitted himself to doubt whether the Pope was in fact anti-Christ. And ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... that he quitted Mr. Franklin's party yesterday morning, but, that having missed his way, he had passed the night on the snow a mile or two to the northward of us. Belanger, he said, being impatient, left the fire about two hours earlier, and, as he had not arrived, he supposed must have gone astray. It will be seen in the sequel, that we had more than sufficient reason to doubt ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... paid for the fare of Lady Carse and her maid to London, and explained that a person of importance having occasion to go to London with attendants, and it being necessary to use haste, the coach was compelled to start six hours earlier than usual; and Lady Carse would have the first choice of places next time;—that ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... 6th instant should have been earlier acknowledged, but that I was desirous to render my answer as satisfactory as possible, and it was necessary to refer to the offices, on the subject of the grant of ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... his courage, as Balthazar Bekker discovered to his cost. This writer was born in West Friezland in 1634, and died at Amsterdam in 1698. He was a pastor of the Reformed Church of Holland, and resided during the greater part of his life at Amsterdam, where he produced his earlier work Recherches sur les Comtes (1683), in which he combated the popular belief in the malign influence of comets. This work was followed a few years later by his more famous book De Betoverde Weereld, or The Enchanted World, [Footnote: Le Monde enchant, ou Examen des sentimens ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... Feuerbach, the "immortal" Proudhon imitates Kant. "What Kant did some sixty years ago for religion, what he did earlier for certainty of certainties; what others before him had attempted to do for happiness or supreme good, the 'Voice of the People' proposes to do for the Government," pompously declares "the father of Anarchism." Let us examine his ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... faintest of clicks. Then, noiselessly the window slid upward. A second fumbling sent the wooden inside shutters ajar. The man worked with no uncertainty. Ever since his visit to the Place, a week earlier, behind the aegis of a big and bright and newly forged telephone-inspector badge, he had carried in his trained memory the location of windows and of obstructing furniture and of the primitive small safe in the living room wall, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... felicities for reaching home, or Mrs. Rossitur will be a distressed when she sees them. Might I propose that you should just bear your weight on this wood-sled, and let my oxen and me have the honour The cup of coffee, I am confident, would be at your lips considerably earlier " ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... injury. But she had also a general aversion to any female tolerably young, and decently well-looking, who showed a wish to approach the house of Dumbiedikes and the proprietor thereof. And as she had raised her mass of mortality out of bed two hours earlier than usual, to come to the rescue of her clamorous niece, she was in such extreme bad humour against all and sundry, that Saddletree would have pronounced that she ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... man touched his hat gravely, a look of great admiration in his eyes, and said, "Good night" like a benediction. Then the girl turned and went into the plain little home and to her belligerent relatives with a light in her eyes and a joy in her steps that had not been there earlier in the day. The dreams that visited her hard pillow that night were heavenly ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... which means the action upon the vegetable substance of germs which begin to grow and multiply after their kind whenever conditions favor them. The earlier stages of this action is called "sweating," and it is beneficial as in the case of hay, tobacco, dried fruits, etc., as is commonly recognized - resulting in what is known as curing - and it is the art of the handler of such products not to allow the ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... do not suppose that it will make much difference to my reputation; my point is rather that my desire to appear in your work will be satisfied so much the earlier if you proceed to deal with my affairs separately and by anticipation, instead of waiting until they arise as elements in the general course of affairs. Besides, by concentrating your mind on one episode and on one person, your matter will be much more detailed and your treatment ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... In—Memoires sur Voltaire par Longchamp et Wagniere—(Paris, 1826), ii. 229 et seq., details enough and more.] perhaps not thinking it would go so far. And it went,—alas, it went to all lengths, mentionable and not mentionable: and M. le Marquis had to be coaxed home in the Spring of 1749,—still earlier it had been suitabler;—and in September ensuing, M. de St. Lambert looking his demurest, there is an important lying-in to be transacted! Newton's PRINCIPIA is, by that time, drawing diligently to its close;—complicated ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... a people, though so much the better as its concord lies in better things, and so much the worse as its concord lies in inferior things. According to this definition, then, the Roman people is indeed a people, and its estate is a commonwealth. But what things that people has loved in its earlier and later times, and how it fell into bloody seditions and into social and civil wars, breaking and corrupting that concord which is the health of a people—of these things history is witness. Yet I would not on that account deny it the name of a people, nor its estate the name ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... sir,' returned Brass; 'by all means. It will be rather a blow to Sarah, sir, but she has all her feelings under control. Ah, Mr Quilp, I often think, sir, if it had only pleased Providence to bring you and Sarah together, in earlier life, what blessed results would have flowed from such a union! You never saw our dear father, sir?—A charming gentleman. Sarah was his pride and joy, sir. He would have closed his eyes in bliss, would Foxey, Mr Quilp, if he could have found her such ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... would that we had met earlier in our lives. Yes, you and I." These last words he added after she had quickly rescued her hand from his grasp. Very quickly she withdrew it now. As quickly she lifted up her face, all covered as it was with tears, and endured the full weight of his gaze. What! was it possible that he knew ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... strength, and was frequently used as a place of refuge by the Kings and Earls of Northumberland. It was founded by Ida, king of the Angles, about A.D. 547, and suffered considerably at the hands of the Danes in 933. Earlier than this, however, in the seventh century, Bamborough was besieged by Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, who, although having recently gained several victories, made great efforts to burn down the castle. Having set his men to work to accumulate a great mass of brushwood, ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... block-and-tackle work on the scows, the horse-and-wagon labor with the goods, continued. The boats were sometimes hauled over wide ridges of rough rocks, till the wonder was that they held together at all. There was one ancient craft, a York boat of earlier times, which the Company was taking through, and this, being stiffly built with a keel, was badly strained and rendered very leaky by the time it got through the rude traverse of the rocky portage. The men took tallow and oakum and roughly calked the ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough

... accurate investigation to ascertain whether those modified versions which betray clear marks of Hellenic origin, were made within syncretistic Judaism itself, or whether they are to be traced back to Catholic writers. In either case, they should not be placed earlier than about the beginning of the third century, but in all probability one or two ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... we say to panpsychism of the type represented by Clifford? It is, I think, sufficiently answered in the earlier chapters ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... must not be concealed that there are likewise proofs that the British race, though much diminished, was not wholly extirpated, and that those who remained were not, merely as Britons, reduced to servitude. For they are mentioned as existing in some of the earlier Saxon laws. In these laws they are allowed a compensation on the footing of the meaner kind of English; and they are even permitted, as well as the English, to emerge out of that low rank into a more liberal condition. This is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Church was keeping on that day, but I shall never forget the terrific bell-ringing with which my ears were assailed, for there are churches every where. The country people were engaged in sowing their grain, to reap it in September. They laughed at our Southern custom of sowing eight months earlier, as unnecessary and even prejudicial to the crops, but I do not know where the right lies. Perhaps we may both be right, for there is no master to compare with experience. I took all the introductions I had received ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... may have been an earlier edition of this book. At all events, the Netherlanders who in 1595 undertook the first voyage from Holland to India, were acquainted with the work either in manuscript or in print. See the journal of this voyage, kept by Frank Van der Does, one of the sharers of the expedition, and printed ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres

... Scranton were allowed by the town council and mayor to play baseball, and also football, since summer waned. Somehow the success that attended the work of Scranton High in the battles of the Three Town League, as narrated in an earlier volume of this series, seemed to have stirred up many of the leading citizens. Besides, Mr. Leonard, the efficient under-principal of the high school, with a genuine love and sympathy for all boys in his heart, had ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... involved can find a social echo. Thus there is a loyalty, very powerful in certain quarters, toward school, college, club, regiment, church, and country. Who shall say that such associations, had they sprung up earlier and been more zealously cultivated, or were they now reinforced by more general sympathy, would not breed all the tenderness and infuse all the moral force which most men ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... miles. And it occurred to some clever man that the irregularities in time we noticed in the eclipses of the satellites corresponded with the distance of Jupiter from us. The further he drew away from us, the later were the eclipses, and as he came nearer they grew earlier. By a brilliant inspiration, this was attributed to the time light took to travel from them to us, and this was the first time anyone had been able to measure the velocity or speed of light. For all practical purposes, on the earth's surface we hold light to be instantaneous, ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... gathered at one end of the Green in a group, which so aroused the innocent curiosity of Mrs. Johnson, as she saw it from one of her upper windows, that she and the children took their early promenade rather earlier than usual. The General talked to the Gipsy, and Jackanapes fondled Lollo's mane, and did not know whether he should be more glad or miserable if his grandfather ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... unhappy pupil, Mr. PENDRAGON, is as guiltless," responded the puzzled Gospeler. "I do not deny that he had a quarrel with Mr. DROOD, in the earlier part of their acquaintance; but, as you, Mr. BUMSTEAD, yourself, admit, their meeting at the Christmas-Eve dinner was amicable; as I firmly believe their last mysterious parting ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various

... till a certain political stage, a stage where the myths of coalescing clans come into contact, and an official settlement is attempted by some school of poets or priests. Moreover, systematization is never so complete that it effaces all the earlier state of things. Behind the official systems of Homer and Hesiod lies the actual chaos of local faiths preserved for us by Pausanias and other mythographers. The common factors in the various local faiths are much the majority among the factors they each possess; and many of these common ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... connection with India took place in the earlier part of the year. Lieutenant Waghorn, whose enterprising genius led him to prosecute the problem of an overland route to India, saw his labours at last crowned with success. The government resolved, with certain modifications, to adopt the basis of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... flew nearer, the old birds saw the prince lying under the tree and no sign of life in the nest. They thought that the misfortune which for so many earlier years had befallen them had again happened and that their nestlings had disappeared. They had never been able to find out the murderer, and now suspected the prince. 'He has eaten our children and sleeps after it; he must die,' said the father-bird, and ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... retina, forming a number of separate pigment-cells into a homogeneous cornea, and following up these first steps by others which, how much soever more apparently complex, would cost comparatively little after the earlier and simpler ones had been taken. Now let but the power competent to do these things be credited with sense enough to be aware of its competence, and it may then be regarded as not unlikely to have done some of them on purpose. Whereupon, the genesis of the eye ceases to be a mystery. ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... sorry, but orders have just been received cancelling all leave. If you had been three hours earlier you would have gotten away. Just stay in that train, as it is going back. Rations will be issued to you for your return journey to your respective stations. Beastly rotten, I ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing who visited at our house should always have put me through the same inflammatory process under similar circumstances. Yet I do not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our social family circle, but some large-handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... my brother, poor thing!" said Count Karl. "She concealed it, and naturally. How could she take a couple of wolves into her confidence? If she had told the pair of ruffians that she was plighted to an Austrian, they would have quieted her at an earlier period. A woman! a girl—signorina! The intolerable cowardice amazes me. It amazes me that you or anyone can uphold the character of such brutes. And when she was dead they lured my brother to the house and slew him; fell upon him with daggers, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... rudiments of spoken language, and now the subject of his labors found himself suddenly deserted and alone. He had not yet been without the four walls of the workshop, as the professor had wished to keep him from association with the grotesque results of his earlier experiments, and now a natural curiosity tempted him to approach the door through which his creator and the man with the bull whip ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... as might have been expected from the earlier record of Rome. The senate refused to recognize the treaty. The defeated consuls themselves sustained this bad faith, saying that they and all the officers should be given up to the Samnites, as having promised what ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... her presence, roamed out on to the sea-shore, and then took himself to bed, having ordered a conveyance to take him to Carbury Manor early in the morning. At breakfast he presented himself to the squire. 'I have come earlier ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... them to the Manchester Martyrs' Gaelic Football Association. These athletes would, no doubt, have returned the instruments honestly; but unfortunately their association had been suppressed by the Government six weeks earlier and had only just been re-formed as the Irish ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham

... man—is still so stubbornly unyielding in his faith that what he learns in an instant becomes immovably rooted in his mind to the utter exclusion, generally, of anything new, which even though it be a matter of demonstrated fact, it matters not if at variance with this earlier knowledge; to him it is ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... of price changes on supply. Let us turn, though, once more to these earlier laws, and with a heightened critical sense let us submit them to the test of the whole gamut of our experience, and see if in any of them we can find the smallest flaw. The first of them will pass through the ordeal—let each reader prove it for ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... we could see at this time we were making as good weather as any of them. And our best chance—the beat home—was yet to come. The Johnnie had the stiffness for that. Had the Johnnie reached Gloucester from the Cape Shore earlier she, too, would have been lightened up and made less stiff. To be sure she would have had her bottom scrubbed and we would have had her up to racing pitch, with every bit of sail just so and her trim gauged ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... Alonso Hojeda, and assigns the 20th May 1499 as its commencement[7]. Americus was probably only pilot of the different navigations he relates. It will be seen in the first section of this chapter, that Americus dates his first voyage two years earlier; obviously to warrant his pretended discovery of the coast of Paria, which Columbus had actually discovered in July or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... since half-past four with the hearing of confessions. He sat in the chapel beside the undecked altar, and they came to him one by one. The household and a few of the nearer neighbours had done their duty in this matter the day before, and a good number had already made their Easter duties earlier in Lent; so by ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... always ready to render any special service with her needle, and was a most welcome guest in any household, and a most efficient helper. To be in the same room with her for a while was sure to be profitable, and as she grew older she was delighted to recall the people and events of her earlier life, always filling her descriptions with wise reflections and much quaint humor. She always insisted, not without truth, that the railroads were making everybody look and act of a piece, and that the young folks were more alike than people of her own day. It is ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... press and turmoil of the fight Bois-Guilbert and the Disinherited Knight repeatedly endeavoured to single out each other, spurred by mutual animosity. Such, however, was the crowd and confusion that, during the earlier part of the conflict, their efforts to meet were unavailing. But when the field became thin, by the numbers on either side who had yielded themselves vanquished or had been rendered incapable of continuing the strife, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... Falls earlier now, fades faster. All our love Moves not our mother's changeless heart, who gives A little light to eyes and stars above, A little life to each ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... exports and imports. No goods could be shipped into or out of the country without a license, which was granted by the War Trade Board only after investigation of the character of the shipment and its destination or source. The earlier export of goods which had found their way to Germany through neutral countries was thus curtailed and the blockade on Germany became strangling. Products necessary to military effectiveness were secured from neutral states in return for permission to buy essentials here. ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... not there, nor among the miners, who had gradually resumed their work as the epidemic weakened its strength and their spirits lightened. Making these discoveries at nightfall, the doctor touched up his horse in some secret dread. He had learned earlier than the rest to feel warmly toward this simple co-laborer. "Perhaps he's gone out to pay Langley a visit," he said: "I'll call and see. He may have stopped ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... he," pursued the Phantom, "who, in this struggle upward, found a friend. I made him—won him—bound him to me! We worked together, side by side. All the love and confidence that in my earlier youth had had no outlet, and found no expression, ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens

... convinced that he had but a single enemy. Otherwise he would have been attacked in force earlier, and more than one shot would have been fired. But the report of the rifle was succeeded by deep silence. The forest was absolutely still, not a breath of wind stirring. His enemy remained invisible, but the besieged youth was confident that he was lying quiet, ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... part of the great Social Revolution which was witnessed by the earlier years of the twentieth century was the event which preceded that Revolution, made it possible, and moulded it; namely, the Conquest of the Professions by the people. Happily it was a Conquest achieved without exciting any active opposition; it advanced unnoticed, step by step, and it was ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... physician Rhasis, and this led him, after four years' labour, to the fountain-head of the occult philosophy, Geber. The latter, next to Hermes himself, is the acknowledged chief of the science, and Trevisan found himself in good hands; although he wished he had made his acquaintance earlier, as he had already spent to no purpose about 800 crowns. The reader must not suppose that the wealth of adepts vanished in the common operations of chemistry; for in point of fact, the material consumed was the material sought for—gold. Some, indeed, supposed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... cooling down toward evening at Sebastian, where an unpicturesque collection of wooden houses stand upon a branch line on the Canadian prairie. The place is not attractive during the earlier portion of the short northern summer, when for the greater part of every week it lies sweltering in heat, in spite of the strong west winds that drive dust-clouds through its rutted streets. As a rule, during the remaining day or two the temperature sharply falls, thunder crashes between downpours ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... these delays in the production of "The Magic Casement" that Henry's novel, "Brasilia," was published much earlier than the play was performed. He had rewritten it so extensively that it was almost a new novel, very different from the manuscript which his father had read, and it received a fair number of reviews. The critics whose judgment he valued, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... headed "How LONG?" She read it with care, her delicate mouth tightening a little. She herself had suggested the lines of it a few days before, to the Editor, and her hints had been partially carried out. It gave a scathing account of Sir Wilfrid's course on the suffrage question—of his earlier coquettings with the woman's cause, his defection and "treachery," the bitter and ingenious hostility with which he was now pursuing the Bill before the House of Commons. "An amiable, white-haired nonentity for the rest of the world—who ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... entertaining concert in the silence of the night, the pleasing effect being heightened by the well-known softening influence of the water, and not a little enhanced by a display of rockets and Roman candles. Earlier in the evening, while taking a look at Ismidt and the surrounding scenery, in company with a few sociable natives, who point out beauty-spots in the surrounding landscape with no little enthusiasm, I am impressed with the extreme ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... way himself some hours earlier, Will had been suddenly surprised to see blue smoke rising from a chimney of the house. It was a very considerable time before such event might reasonably be expected and a second look alarmed Blanchard's heart, for on the little chimney-stack he knew each pot, and it ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... come to worse advisers, nephew Warrington, and so I should have told my sister earlier, had she condescended to write to me by him, as she has done by you," said the old lady, tossing up her head. "Hey! hey!" she said, at night, as she arranged herself for the rout to which she was going, to her waiting-maid: "this ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... was there, and had not heard of it, and he took it very well. I am now come home before six, and find a packet from the Bishop of Clogher, with one enclosed to the Duke of Ormond, which is ten days earlier dated than another I had from Parvisol; however, 'tis no matter, for the Duke has already disposed of the Vice-Chancellorship to the Archbishop of Tuam,(53) and I could not help it, for it is a thing wholly you know in the Duke's power; and I find the Bishop has enemies about the ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... homes of the fallen and stricken; the teacher gathering the little ones around him Sabbath by Sabbath; the tract distributor, now, alas! too seldom seen about his work, but of great usefulness in earlier days—these and a score of differently named toilers have laboured in the uprearing of this city of the Lord. But ever the preacher has been the leader of them all—the pioneer, the quarryman, the inspirer. The pulpit has been ever the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... their prizes. The hostile fleets remained in sight of each other till the 26th, when the enemy bore away. The capture of two ships from so superior a force would have been considered as no inconsiderable victory, a few years earlier; but Nelson had introduced a new era in our naval history; and the nation felt respecting this action as he had felt on a somewhat similar occasion. They regretted that Nelson, with his eleven ships, had not been in Sir ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... the famous description of those earlier times in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the original passage, with another version, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... lounging-place; the scholar, to listen to the master in philosophy; the sedentary, for their customary constitutional on the foot-course; and the invalid and the aged, to court the return of health, or to retain somewhat of the vigor of their earlier years. The Athenians wisely held that there could be no health of the mind, unless the body were cared for,—and viewed exercise also as a powerful remedial agent in disease. Such a variety of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... relative accuracy explain a wider range of similar phenomena. It is true that in studies where we know that there exists a number of unascertained factors we shall expect a more fundamental displacement of earlier and more speculative hypotheses than in studies where we know, or think we know, that most of the phenomena with which we are concerned are equally within our ken: but the earlier scientific treatment, so far as it goes, is equally ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... of writers in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, who showed a scorn for all moral rules and the generally received dogmas of the Christian religion. The most eminent English writers of this school were Bulwer (afterwards Lord Lytton), Byron, Moore, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... from the appearance of the document what it was, but Mr. Brander just pointed out where we were to sign and we signed. The only thing I noticed was that as I wrote my eye fell on the top line, and I saw that it was dated ten days earlier." ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... English invaders, then took refuge in Italy, where it grew to be the wonder of the world; and how the corruption of the ruling classes and of the Church, with the indignation and rebellion that this gave rise to, combined to frustrate the promise of earlier days. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... day lawyers have reason to be grateful to Bacon for the promptitude with which, on taking possession of the Marble Chair, he revived the ancient usages of earlier holders of the seal, and set an example of courteous hospitality to the bar, which no subsequent Chancellor has been able to disregard without loss of respect and prestige. Though a short attack of gout qualified the new pleasure of his elevation—an attack ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... the Weddell Sea preparing for us? The whaling captains at South Georgia were generously ready to share with me their knowledge of the waters in which they pursued their trade, and, while confirming earlier information as to the extreme severity of the ice conditions in this sector of the Antarctic, they were able to give advice ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... honoured and fortunate as to receive both the beginning and the end of your legal teaching from the mouth of the Emperor, can now enter on the study of them without delay. After the completion therefore of the fifty books of the Digest or Pandects, in which all the earlier law has been collected by the aid of the said distinguished Tribonian and other illustrious and most able men, we directed the division of these same Institutes into four books, comprising the first elements of the whole science of law. In these ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... by the Saxon conquest, a purely Teutonic kingdom was built up. The Saxons were heathen, who had never felt the civilizing influence of Rome. The traces of the earlier state of things in the province which had long been sundered from the empire, they swept away in the progress of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... presence of pipes could reasonably be accounted for otherwise than by associating them with the antiquity claimed for them. In any case, the entire absence of any allusions whatever to smoking in any shape or form in our pre-Elizabethan literature, or in mediaeval or earlier art, is sufficient proof that from the social point of view smoking did not then exist. The inhaling of the smoke of dried herbs for medicinal purposes, whether through a pipe-shaped funnel or otherwise, had nothing in it akin to the smoking of tobacco for both individual and ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson



Words linked to "Earlier" :   early, comparative degree, comparative, sooner



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org