For those interested in a little info about this site: it’s a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for — just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn’t be too much more work to get this up and running.
The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary — which is now in the public domain. However, after a day’s work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.
Finally, I went back to Wiktionary — which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it’s not properly structured for parsing. That’s when I stumbled across the UBY project — an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I’m happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.
Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.
Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).
Asked
9 years, 7 months ago
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What part of speech is early in «I had my lunch early»?
Is it an adjective or an adverb?
RegDwigнt
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asked Sep 14, 2013 at 17:12
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The word early can certainly be used as an adverb of time (See Adverbs of Time list)
If it feels strange to you to call it an adverb, just try replacing it with a more «familiar» adverb
I had my lunch quickly.
It’s an indication of how the verb had was carried out.
RegDwigнt
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answered Sep 14, 2013 at 18:19
2
I think it’s an adverb in this case. To use it as an adjective, you can say
I had an early lunch.
answered Sep 14, 2013 at 17:18
NoahNoah
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Adverb
Early in his career he moved to the city.
a word first recorded early in the 17th century
They were trailing by a touchdown early in the fourth quarter.
The package should be arriving early next week.
She arrived early to help with the preparations.
I got up early to finish packing.
Adjective
the early symptoms of the disease
The early part of the book is better than the later part.
We had an early spring this year.
We’re early. The show doesn’t start for half an hour.
I’ve always been an early riser.
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Recent Examples on the Web
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The burning vessel – which is believed to be carrying 55,000 gallons of diesel and 19,000 pounds of freon on board – caught fire early Saturday morning while moored in the waterway, the US Coast Guard said in a news release.
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Most commercial beekeepers send their bees to California early in the year to help pollinate its $5 billion-a-year almond crop, then move them elsewhere to pollinate commodities ranging from avocados to cherries or to the Midwest to produce honey.
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What fans — and the Roy siblings — didn’t expect was a premature death early in the final season.
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Orr said lawmakers could consider the education budget and supplemental spending bill as early as the first week in May.
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The Israeli military said its forces attacked targets in Syria early Sunday after six rockets were launched from Syrian territory in two batches toward Israel in a rare attack from Israel’s northeastern neighbor.
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In India, an early version of plastic roads showed no signs of wear 10 years after first being built, according to a 2012 study.
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Keibler, now a mom of three, spent more than five years as a professional wrestler in the early 2000s.
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But such a lottery seed would come with minimal opportunity to move up from draft placement in the early-to-mid teens.
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While the bill doesn’t explicitly mention menstruation, an early version sought to limit health education before sixth grade.
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Carter graduated from Lake Highlands High School. CORRECTION, 2:50 p.m., March 28, 2023: An early version of this story incorrectly said that Kathy Stewart worked as executive director of the Lake Highlands Public Improvement District for two years.
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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘early.’ Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Wiki User
∙ 4y ago
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Early can be:
adjective — We had an early lunch then caught the bus.
noun — Our team had a good star with an early goal.
adverb — I had to finish work early today
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∙ 4y ago
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Early is an adverb or an adjective.
Early means ‘near the beginning of a period of time or event’. The comparative and superlative forms are earlier and earliest. We most commonly use early as an adverb:
We’ll have to get up early to catch the flight. (early in the morning)
The meeting’s now taking place in March, two months earlier.
Early can also be used as an adjective:
[talking about a famous composer]
His early music was written mainly for children.
His earliest memories were of life in Brazil.
Early as an adverb can also mean ‘before the time that was expected’:
You’re early. We haven’t had breakfast yet.
Typical error
-
We don’t use early to mean ‘a short time after now’ or ‘a short time after then’. We use soon:
Let’s meet soon.
Not: Let’s meet early.
They had only been in Greece for a week but they soon learned to speak a few words of the local language.
Not: … but they early learned to speak a few words …