drive/send someone to an early grave

early | American Dictionary

early
adjective, adverb[ -er/-est only ]
us/ˈɜr·li/
near the beginning of (a period of time), or before the usual, expected, or planned time:
I got up early this morning to walk the dog.
Sheena’s in her early thirties.
She arrived early for the interview.
If you finish early (= before the end of the allowed time) you can go home.
Detroit has been an automotive center since the early days/years (= the beginning time) of car manufacturing.
Here’s a dish I prepared earlier (= I made a short time ago).
It was a great race for Needles, who took the lead early on (= soon after the start).

early | Business English

early
adjective
uk /ˈɜːli/usearlier | earliest
 at your earliest convenience
used to ask someone to do something, or to say that you will do something as soon as possible:
Please give me a call back at your earliest convenience on extension one two four seven.

Examples of early

early
In earlier books (1990, 1995), he has introduced much-needed grammatical sophistication into research on human linguistic prehistory.
Thus, although a narrator's views are evident covertly through her choice of story, the overt message emanates from the characters or earlier tellers.
All the transcripts for the child prior to the offer of that word were searched to identify any earlier adult or child uses.
Establishing what these functions were requires recourse to our analysis of earlier talk and other conversation-external data.
In the face of this strong impetus to stay on the earlier theme, the new direction of talk actually gets taken up.
Is it interesting because it is higher in pitch, or quieter than earlier sounds?
The earliest of this musical research was understandably of a rather general nature.
In the earliest dances various metres and forms are employed.
We lack the quantitative data from earlier par ts of the 20th century that would conclusively suppor t the diachronic account just outlined.
We also provide a detailed comparison of our results with those in the earlier literature that studies the dynamics of the home sector.
The bidder had made the same bid in an earlier round.
When such members lost, they were much less likely to lose to another non-conformist in the 1980s and 1990s than in earlier decades.
With the techniques of the earlier sections, we are able to solve these initial boundary value problems explicitly.
Thus, both the year offsets and two scribal errors suggest the existence of an earlier document.
The late 17th century seems the earliest likely period for their composition.
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