Word.ws English Dictionary

early doors

early doors adverb: early; at a time before expected; sooner than usual.

Adverb

early doors (not comparable)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland) Early; at a time before expected; sooner than usual.
    • Mudchester Rovers conceded two goals early doors and never got back into the game.

Adjective

early doors (not comparable)

  1. (Northern England) Early, near the start or beginning.
    • The party was very dull, so I made an early doors exit.

Noun

early doors pl (plural only)

  1. (Cockney, plural, plural-only, slang) Women's drawers.

Origin of early doors

According to some, the phrase originated at a time when English pubs closed in the afternoon as a term for customers who were waiting or arrived soon after the pub re-opened in the evening. Alternatively, the phrase is said to originate in the theatre world, where it described a facility available to early-arriving members of the audience, who were allowed to avoid the crush and choose the best seats in return for paying a small premium.

Questions about early doors

What does early doors mean?
Early doors means early; at a time before expected; sooner than usual.
What part of speech is early doors?
Early doors can be an adverb, an adjective or a noun.

Words near early doors in the dictionary

  1. early crows
  2. early day motion
  3. early day motions
  4. early days
  5. early door
  6. early doors
  7. Early effect
  8. Early effects
  9. Early English
  10. early fetal demise
  11. early fetal demises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: early doors (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “early doors.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/early_doors. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.