Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person who settled homestead land in the western United States before it was officially made available, in order to have first choice of location.
  • noun A native or resident of Oklahoma.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In the western States, any one who settles on government territory before it is legally opened to settlers and thus gains the choice of land and location; hence, any one who gains an unfair advantage by getting ahead of others.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun In the western United States, one who settles on government land before it is legally open to settlement in order to gain the prior claim that the law gives to the first settler when the land is opened to settlement; hence, any one who does a thing prematurely or anticipates another in acting in order to gain an unfair advantage.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective comparative form of soon: more soon
  • adverb comparative form of soon: more soon
  • adverb rather.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb more readily or willingly
  • adverb comparatives of `soon' or `early'
  • noun a native or resident of Oklahoma

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From soon.]

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Examples

  • But, if the rumours have a trend, the trend is: 1. Klein will be gone sooner than later emphasis on *sooner*.

    Archive 2005-10-01 daveberta 2005

  • But, if the rumours have a trend, the trend is: 1. Klein will be gone sooner than later emphasis on *sooner*.

    placing odds on the next king of alberta... daveberta 2005

  • But in the forenoon, while Fanny after breakfast took a nap, I snatched an opportunity to cross-question Mrs. Physick, from whom I knew I could sooner or later obtain all she knew, -- the _sooner_ it would be, if she had anything good to tell; as, in my inexperience, I was almost sure she must have.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 Various

  • “Ah, young gentleman, ” said Mr. Deane, with that tendency to repress youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of their easiest duties, “that’s sooner said than done, —sooner said than done.

    V. Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster. Book III—The Downfall 1917

  • Getting it in sooner is ideal, but the rainy season can be quirky and no one knows this better than the farmers.

    Corn, beans and squash: the life cycle of the milpa 2009

  • Getting it in sooner is ideal, but the rainy season can be quirky and no one knows this better than the farmers.

    Corn, beans and squash: the life cycle of the milpa 2009

  • He may be forced to get used to the term sooner rather than later.

    PopMatters 2010

  • He may be forced to get used to the term sooner rather than later.

    PopMatters 2010

  • Dhabi-based owners to challenge for the title sooner rather than later.

    iac world news feed 2010

  • Everyone gets a nickname sooner or later in Mexico, and Thia’s already been given one by the night shift: La Luz—“the Light.”

    Gringos in Paradise Barry Golson 2006

Comments

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  • New York Times: 'I didn’t read the stories because no child could — they are stomach-churningly, almost incomprehensibly saccharine. Here, for example, is how Sandburg describes the cost of an episode of militarism: “And the thousand golden ice tongs the sooners gave the boomers, and the thousand silver wheelbarrows the boomers gave the sooners, both with hearts and hands carved on the handles, they were long ago broken up in one of the early wars deciding pigs must be painted both pink and green with both checks and stripes.�?'

    January 12, 2009