while
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ʍaɪl/
ipa: /waɪl/
ipa: /wæl/
ipa: /wɑl/
rhymes: -aɪl
homophone: wile
Forms: form: whiles
form: whiling
form: whiled
form: whiled
Etymology: From Middle English whyle, from Old English hwīl, from Proto-West Germanic *hwīlu, from Proto-Germanic *hwīlō (compare Dutch wijl, Low German Wiel, German Weile, Danish hvile (“rest”), Norwegian Bokmål hvile (“rest”)), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷyeh₁- (“to rest”). Cognate with Albanian sillë (“breakfast”), Latin tranquillus, Sanskrit चिर (cirá), Persian شاد (šâd).
Senses: examples: text: I whiled away the hours whilst waiting for him to arrive
text: Some were whiling the time by admiring the figures on the cloth of tissue.
ref: 1839, Robert Folkestone Williams, The Youth of Shakespeare, page 184:
text: Here in seclusion, as a widow may, / The lovely lady whiled the hours away, […]
ref: 1863 November 23, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Student’s Tale. The Falcon of Ser Federigo.”, in Tales of a Wayside Inn, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 35:
text: As if she was just whiling her time with them until his arrival.
ref: 2018, Shukla Lal, Floating Logs:
synonyms: idle
laze
lounge
qualifier: see also while away
glosses: To pass (time) idly.
raw_tags: with away
examples: text: They whiled them with such answere as suted to their purposes, and long adoe was made in weaving and unweaving Penelopes web, till the Spanish Armada was upon the Coast, and the very Ordnance proclaimed in their eares a surcease from further illusions.
ref: 1588, Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or, Purchas his Pilgrimes:
text: He sat her on the corner of the carpenter's bench, and parried or diverted her questions about her father, and the desirability of wakening him by handing her the long curled shavings; and when these palled, he whiled her on by the impossible task of teaching him her version of the 'Three Golden Balls' a blank-verse poem, but rhythmically intoned, which he had taught her.
ref: 1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 130:
text: In other worlds I whiled me now Through many a dark night long.
ref: 2010, Dr Rudolf Steiner, Truth-Wrought-Words:
text: Like a good father, he whiled him with stories about the past of his nation and discussed in detail the intricacies of his profession, teaching the child secrets of the craft that had been passed from generation to generation.
ref: 2018, Michael Joyce, Yada:
glosses: To occupy or entertain (someone) in order to let time pass.
examples: text: The tedious hours whiled slowly on, 'till the succeeding afternoon, when the expected carriage made its appearance much sooner than they had promised themselves.
ref: 1764, Mrs. Gunning (Susannah), Family Pictures, a Novel. Containing Curious and Interesting Memoirs of Several Persons of Fashion in W-----re, page 115:
text: Years whiled. He aged, sank, sickened; and was not: / And it was said, 'A man intractable / And curst is gone.'
ref: 1901, Thomas Hardy, “A Man”, in Poems of the Past and the Present:
glosses: To elapse, to pass.
Synonyms: sense: loiter
word: loiter
Derived terms: while away