Emily Dickinson Lexicon

EAR'-LI-NESS, n. [er'liness. See Early and Ere.]

A state of advance or forwardness; a state of being before any thing, or at the beginning; as, the earliness of rising in the morning is a rising at the dawn of the morning, or before the usual time of rising. So we speak of the earliness of spring, or the earliness of plants, to express a state somewhat in advance of the usual time of spring, or growth of plants.