Archaic or literary word meaning 'soon' or 'before long'; in a short time.
From Old English 'ær long,' combining 'ær' (ever, soon) and 'long' (duration). The phrase grammaticalized into a single adverb in Middle English and is now archaic.
Shakespeare and Chaucer used 'erelong' all the time, but it disappeared from English by the 1800s—it's a ghost word that haunts old literature, a reminder that 'soon' wasn't always the default term.
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