earlies
- 1Early shifts in a job that rotates its staff through different start times.
He prefers earlies because he can finish by early afternoon.
The roster put me on earlies for two weeks, then nights after that.
Oppositelates
Note
Shift workers say which shift they are on: you are on earlies this week. The word is formed the same plural-only way as the early potatoes, and nobody calls one shift an early. It belongs to talk among colleagues. In a contract, a job advertisement or a formal notice, early shifts is the safer choice.
- 2Potatoes harvested early in the season, before the main crop is ready to lift.
We planted earlies in March to have new potatoes by midsummer.
The first earlies were ready to dig well ahead of the rest of the rows.
Note
An adjective turned into a plural noun: early plus the plural -s. It has no singular in use, so a grower plants earlies but never an early. Growers divide them into first earlies and second earlies. Both are lifted ahead of the later maincrop and are meant for eating fresh rather than for storage.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "early" combined with the suffix "-s".