Before crossword clue

The most likely answers for the crossword clue “Before” are AHEAD, FIRST or EARLY, with 5 letters. Below are 15 answers from 4 to 10 letters, best match first in each length, then what each top answer means and how to tell them apart.

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The best answers, explained

JUST 4 letters · adverb

only a very short time before

AHEAD 5 letters · adverb

at or in the front “I see the lights of a town ahead”

HARDLY 6 letters · adverb

only a very short time before “we hardly knew them”

EARLIER 7 letters · adverb

earlier in time; previously “he called me the day before but your call had come even earlier”

FOREMOST 8 letters · adverb

before anything else

LITERALLY 9 letters · adverb

(intensifier before a figurative expression) without exaggeration “our eyes were literally pinned to TV during the Gulf War”

ORIGINALLY 10 letters · adverb

before now

Telling them apart

With 5 squares, AHEAD, FIRST and EARLY all fit. The first letter tells them all apart: A → AHEAD · F → FIRST · E → EARLY. Fill in that crossing answer first.

With 6 squares, HARDLY, BARELY and SCARCE all fit. The first letter tells them all apart: H → HARDLY · B → BARELY · S → SCARCE. Fill in that crossing answer first.

With 8 squares, FOREMOST, SCARCELY and HEADLONG all fit. The first letter tells them all apart: F → FOREMOST · S → SCARCELY · H → HEADLONG. Fill in that crossing answer first.

What “before” means

• adverb: earlier in time; previously (“I had known her before”)
• adverb: at or in the front (“with the cross of Jesus marching on before”)

A clue usually points at one of these senses, so the right answer is the one that matches the sense the puzzle means: check it against the crossing words.

About these answers

We match the clue against our own thesaurus and dictionary (Open English WordNet): words that mean the same as BEFORE, and words whose definition is BEFORE. We don't copy answers from newspaper puzzles, so a clue that leans on trivia or wordplay may need the crossing letters instead.