U.S. slang., [f. SOON adv.] One who acts prematurely; esp. one who endeavors to get into Government territory in the West before the time appointed for its settlement.
1889. Yankton Press & Dakotan, 23 July, 1/3. The decision of the land office ousting sooners, as those who entered Oklahoma before noon, April 22, are called, is causing excitement.
1890. in Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, 7 May. Governor Campbell … thinks it altogether too soon to talk of 1892…. The Governor is quite right in declining to be regarded as a sooner.
1892. Law Times, XCIII. 413/1. The settler that gets in surreptitiously … is called a ‘Sooner,’ because he gets there sooner than the rest.
1893. Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 Aug., 4/3. The intention and attempt … to keep the ‘sooners’ off the Cherokee strip … have come to grief.
