sooner rather than later
sooner rather than later adverb: in the fairly near future; fairly soon.
Adverb
sooner rather than later (comparative form only)
- In the fairly near future; fairly soon.
- I believe that therapists need to be proactive rather than laissez faire in addressing problems— if not immediately, then sooner rather than later.1994, Harold S. Bernard, K. Roy MacKenzie, Basics of Group Psychotherapy, page 156
- Their present policy of sterilizing monetary inflows is creating imbalances which suggests, sooner rather than later, they're going to have to, for stability purposes, move their currency.2006, B. Brown, What Drives Global Capital Flows?, page 174
Forms of sooner rather than later
| alternative form | sooner than later |
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Questions about sooner rather than later
- What does sooner rather than later mean?
- Sooner rather than later means in the fairly near future; fairly soon.
- What part of speech is sooner rather than later?
- Sooner rather than later is an adverb.
Words near sooner rather than later in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sooner rather than later (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: “sooner rather than later.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sooner_rather_than_later. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.