while – English noun declension

English noun forms of while

Noun: while
Singularwhile

Sample Sentences

  • He lectured for quite a long while.
  • It’s a long while since anyone lived there, so it’s a ruin now.
  • Do the good that's nearest Though it's dull at whiles. [1857, Charles Kingsley, [Letters and Memories]:]
  • There are whiles […] when ye are altogether too canny and Whiggish to be company for a gentleman like me. [1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 22, in Kidnapped, page 158:]
  • Things were pretty dark for a while — several whiles, actually. [2017, Anne Thériault, “The Monster Book of Questions and Answers”, in Kelly Jensen, editor, Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, Algonquin Young Readers, page 27:]

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 and Norwegian Bokmål hvile (“rest”), Norwegian Nynorsk kvila (“rest”), Swedish vila (“rest”), Faroese and Icelandic hvíla (“rest”)) from Proto-Indo-European *kʷyeh₁- (“to rest”). Cognate with Albanian sillë (“breakfast”), Latin tranquillus, Sanskrit चिर (cirá), Persian شاد (šâd). See: Middle English Nouns 'whyle', Dutch Nouns 'wijl', German Nouns 'Weile', Swedish Nouns 'vila', Latin Nouns 'tranquillus'.

Verbs referencing "while"

German Nouns Weile, Swedish Nouns vila, Danish Nouns hvile, Icelandic Nouns hvíld, Dutch Nouns wijl, Danish Nouns while-løkke.