Earlier in a sentence as an adjective

Look at the rise of the 8-bit look and sound that harks back to an earlier era.

We had seen the older couple earlier, but we didn't know them, and they were gone by the time we got our bill.

* The earlier in your career it is now, the more important this time is for your development.

But the candidates we've hired lately compare extremely well to our earlier teams!

So when earlier it was mentioned, I assumed "They have to have a different angle on this; they're a YC company.

Earlier in a sentence as an adverb

The same woman had a hearty laugh earlier in the firing meeting after joking, "I bet you didn't expect your afternoon to go like this, huh?

> Until that point, his only brush with the law was a temporary restraining order two years earlier.> "He started threatening me, saying that he would **** me.

If we really cared about benchmark performance over anything else we would have dealt with the locking issues earlier so multi-threaded benchmarks would be better.

A passive attacker could, in an earlier version of the Dragonfly protocol, discern how many iterations through the loop had happened to find a valid point given a password.

" Harkens back to the earlier discussion in the interview about the 'self-censorship' pyramid for journalists.- Journalists should give all of their source data, not just choice quotes, so that people can make up their own minds.

Earlier definitions

adjective

(comparative and superlative of `early') more early than; most early; "a fashion popular in earlier times"; "his earlier work reflects the influence of his teacher"; "Verdi's earliest and most raucous opera"

See also: earliest

adverb

earlier in time; previously; "I had known her 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"

See also: before

adverb

comparatives of `soon' or `early'; "Come a little sooner, if you can"; "came earlier than I expected"

See also: sooner

adverb

before now; "why didn't you tell me in the first place?"

See also: originally