Definition of "anon"

Caliban: Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon,I know it by thy trembling: now Prosper works upon thee.

1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene ii]

But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it;

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Matthew 13:20

The dead man answered thus:“What good gift shall God give us?”,The boards answered him anon:“Flesh to feed hell's worm upon.”

1866, Algernon Swinburne, After death, lines 47–50

[…] for as much as the same consisteth not in the extreames, but in a verie mediocritie of wealth and riches, as it shall better appeare anone.

1598, John Stow, A Suruay of London

With this man this is the hour of the white logic (of which more anon), when he knows that he may know only the laws of things—the meaning of things never.

1913 August, Jack London, John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., pages 12–13

Sometimes he trots, as if he told the steps,With gentle majesty and modest pride;Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,As who should say, lo! thus my strength is try'd...The spelling has been modernized.

1593, 1896

Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed.

1906 April, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “A Cosmopolite in a Café”, in The Four Million, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co, page 27

Indeed they did all they could to avoid it, coyly hiding their identities behind initials, asterisks, and anons

1904, Thomas Wright, The Life of Edward Fitzgerald, volume 1, page 94

Every body shared in the emotion of Anons [sic] song .... Anon is sometimes man, sometimes woman....

1940, Virginia Woolf, Anon

Indeed, virtually every known playwright (and probably most of those 'anons') occupied some position in one or more of the patronage networks

2004, Jane Milling, Peter Thomson, Joseph W. Donohue, Baz Kershaw, The Cambridge History of British Theatre, page 207

those identified by initials only and the 'Anons' (some of whom are here unmasked)

2006, J. Michael Walton, Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English, page 185

On the floor again she came upon a couple of "Anons" and frowned at them: Ought We to Visit Her and Cast Away in The Cold. Those would certainly do very well on the top shelf.

1984, Helen Hooven Santmyer, "...And Ladies of the Club", page 214