adv. (colloquial).—See quot. 1885.
1885. Daily Telegraph, 14 Dec. “He is a little before his time, a trifle PREVIOUS, as the Americans say, but so are all geniuses.”
1890. Pall Mall Gazette, 23 June, 4, 2. Next year his term of service expires, and then we shall both be … But to state that now is what the Americans would call a little PREVIOUS. Ibid. (1901), 10 April, 1, 3. So there it is—an object-lesson in the inadvisability of the too PREVIOUS.
