Earlier or Early for the venir case?

Question

The “venir” block has the translation “ He came an hour earlier.”. Should this be “He came an hour early”? Or does the meaning really change for the “venir” context?

Accepted Answer

Hi Brian, 
I have changed 'earlier' to 'early' in the example you mention to match all the others.
Thank you for pointing this out!

Answer

I don't know what other ppl think, but to me the sentence "The train arrived an hour early" is perfectly fine English and means that the train arrived an hour earlier than expected or scheduled.

If you said "The train arrived an hour earlier", that begs the implicit question of: earlier than what? It could be an hour earlier than another train or an hour earlier than I got to the train station. Context would need to be provided. Sure, without any context one would also assume earlier than scheduled. But it is not quite as clear cut as the other alternative.