Sooner

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Sooner \Soon"er\, n.
     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.
     [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  sooner
       adv 1: comparatives of `soon' or `early'; "Come a little sooner, if
              you can"; "came earlier than I expected" [syn: {earlier}]
       2: more readily or willingly; "clean it well, preferably with
          warm water"; "I'd rather be in Philadelphia"; "I'd sooner
          die than give up" [syn: {preferably}, {rather}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  23 Moby Thesaurus words for "sooner":
     before, beforehand, by choice, by election, by vote, colonial,
     colonist, colonizer, earlier, first, homesteader, immigrant,
     in preference, nester, pioneer, planter, precursor, preferably,
     rather, rather than, settler, sooner than, squatter