Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 December 1

= December 1 =

Whilst or while?
I am busy updating a website for a client. The text they gave me includes "...cool off in our swimming pool whilst your BBQ fire is getting started at your chalet". Is that a correct use of "whilst"? The Engvar, if it matters, is South African/Commonwealth. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:38, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not wrong, but it comes over as a bit pompous to me. "While" goes much better in this sentence. --Viennese Waltz 11:02, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I know of no context in which "whilst" is a better word than "while". Abolish it, I say. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  11:04, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * In British and Indian English whilst does not have the pretentious aura it has elsewhere. I don't know about South African English, but while is the safer choice, especially if the site should also appeal to foreign customers. Unless, of course, the point is to create a suggestion of luxurious elegance for snobs the culturally refined elite. --Lambiam 11:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks everyone - the consensus seems to be that "whilst" is too high register for the website of a B&B in a small rural town. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:50, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Whilst My Guitar Gently Weeps? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:15, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * By the dictionary definition, the two words are basically perfect exact synonyms. However, as noted, they vary in register, and so depending on the social and cultural context one or the other may be more appropriate.  YMMV, etc.  -- Jayron 32 12:04, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Today i learned a new word: excrescent (Epenthesis). fiveby(zero) 12:31, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Interesting link, covering amidst, amongst, and whilst. I have an unpleasant autonomic response to amongst and whilst, but it hadn't occurred to me to group amidst with them.  I don't use it (or amid) very much, but it looks OK to me, whereas amid makes me think of the reaction product of an amine with a carboxylic acid, even though that's not how you spell it. --Trovatore (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I can't comment on "amid", because it is not apart of my personal use vocabulary at all, but I will strongly assert that among and amongst are not perfect synonyms, and in most cases of the time one of them is more appropriate than the other; the difference may not be easily defined in a dictionary-type fashion, however, which might be the strong reactions invoked in some, as you described...I will give a few usage examples; if anyone feels a strong need to verify, the only way I can think of is to find usage examples in the wild: both words have been in continual use in the exact same way they are now since at least the 15th century (Late Middle English period).
 * Examples:
 *  There are spies in our ranks: the enemy is among us.
 *  The seeds of discord were sown amongst the gods.
 * 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:A19B:E835:C1A:979B (talk) 07:40, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
 * See, and I thought that "excrescent" was the odor of feces. -- Jayron 32 18:53, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * A full moon is an excrescent. --Lambiam 23:26, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * See also SEMANTIC ENIGMAS - What is the difference between while and whilst?. Alansplodge (talk) 10:48, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * To me "whilst" comes across as very marked language, while "amidst" is normal usage, and "among" and "amongst" are both current. The difference being that "amongst" is generally used specifically about humans ("He stood out amongst the crowd") while "among" is more common with inanimate objects ("Among my souvenirs"). --Khajidha (talk) 02:11, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I've never understood the prejudice against whilst. If it's natural to you to use it then do so, and if it isn't, don't. You'll rarely, if ever, actually improve a piece of prose by its removal. DuncanHill (talk) 14:36, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Carthago delenda est. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:11, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

You Will Know When You Get There

By Allen Curnow

Nobody comes up from the sea as late as this in the day and the season, and nobody else goes down

the last steep kilometre, wet-metalled where a shower passed shredding the light which keeps

pouring out of its tank in the sky, through summits, trees, vapours thickening and thinning. Too

credibly by half celestial, the dammed reservoir up there keeps emptying while the light lasts

over the sea, where it "gathers the gold against it". The light is bits of crushed rock randomly

glinting underfoot, wetted by the short shower, and down you go and so in its way does

the sun which gets there first. Boys, two of them, turn campfirelit faces, a hesitancy to speak

is a hesitancy of the earth rolling back and away behind this man going down to the sea with a bag

to pick mussels, having an arrangement with the tide, the ocean to be shallowed three point seven metres,

one hour's light to be left and there's the excrescent moon sponging off the last of it. A door

slams, a heavy wave, a door, the sea-floor shudders, Down you go alone, so late, into the surge-black fissure.