early

The filled squares are the 2 vowels — 2 of 5 letters. In the size-ranked list, early sits in the everyday tier.

Letters

58,636 words share the length

Syllables

2stress on the first

Anagrams

3layer, relay

One letter away

2earls, marly

• adjectiveat or near the beginning of a period of time or course of events or before the usual or expected time
• adjectivebeing or occurring at an early stage of development
• adjectivebelonging to the distant past

The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary reads it as er1 l iy0 — 2 syllables, the stress on syllable 1.

8 words share everything from the last stressed vowel on — that is what counts as a rhyme here.

• burly
• curly
• surly
• hurley
• pearly
• burley
• hurly
• girlie

3 other words use exactly these letters: layer, relay, leary.

The whole set on one page.

• earls
• marly

Same length, one position changed. <1% of the 8,636 words this long are a neighbour.

• 5 letter words8,636
• Starts E7,067
• Starts EA207
• Ends Y
• 5 letters starting E

Tier: everyday. The tiers come from the English Speller Database and rank by list size, not by how often a word is used — see where the words come from.