Early crossword clue

The most likely answers for the crossword clue “Early” are OTHER, FIRST or YOUNG, with 5 letters. Below are 30 answers from 3 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

NEW 3 letters · adjective

(of crops) harvested at an early stage of development; before complete maturity “new potatoes”

PAST 4 letters · adjective

earlier than the present time; no longer current “time past”

OTHER 5 letters · adjective

belonging to the distant past “in other times”

FUTURE 6 letters · adjective

yet to be or coming “some future historian will evaluate him”

ADVANCE 7 letters · verb

move forward, also in the metaphorical sense

PREVIOUS 8 letters · adjective

just preceding something else in time or order “the previous owner”

PRIMITIVE 9 letters · adjective

belonging to an early stage of technical development; characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness “primitive movies of the 1890s”

ABORIGINAL 10 letters · adjective

characteristic of or relating to people inhabiting a region from the beginning “the aboriginal peoples of Australia”

Telling them apart

With 4 squares, PAST, RUDE and SHED all fit. The first letter tells them all apart: P → PAST · R → RUDE · S → SHED. Fill in that crossing answer first.

With 5 squares, OTHER, FIRST, YOUNG, CRUDE and AZOIC all fit. The first letter tells them all apart: O → OTHER · F → FIRST · Y → YOUNG · C → CRUDE · A → AZOIC. Fill in that crossing answer first.

With 6 squares, FUTURE, FORMER, PRIMAL and SOONER all fit. The third letter tells them all apart: T → FUTURE · R → FORMER · I → PRIMAL · O → SOONER. Fill in that crossing answer first.

What “early” means

• adjective: at or near the beginning of a period of time or course of events or before the usual or expected time (“early morning”)
• adjective: being or occurring at an early stage of development (“in an early stage”)
• adjective: belonging to the distant past (“the early inhabitants of Europe”)
• adjective: very young (“at an early age”)

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 EARLY, and words whose definition is EARLY. We don't copy answers from newspaper puzzles, so a clue that leans on trivia or wordplay may need the crossing letters instead.