adv. Forms: see ERE and NOW; often as two words. Before this time.
c. 1340. Cursor M., 2982 (Trin.). She is clene as she was ar now. Ibid., 17785 (Fairf.). Ye wold nevir yt leve or now.
1393. Langl., P. Pl., C. VIII. 181. Ich seyh neuere palmere with pyk ne with scrippe Asken after hym, er now in þys ilke place.
1553. T. Wilson, Rhet. (1567), 47 b. He hath made suche shiftes for money ere-now, that [etc.].
1577. trans. Bullinger’s Decades (1592), 258. The very same words, that other before me … haue vsed yer now.
1672. Dryden, Conq. Granada, IV. ii. 46 (J.). My Father has repented him e’re now.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), II. 384. The whole species would have ere now been extinguished.
1828. Hawthorne, Fanshawe, viii. (1879), 140. I have done enough, erenow, to insure its heaviest weight.
