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Showing results for a while back. Search instead for Meanwhile reached.
Synonyms

a while back

Idioms  

  1. Also, a while ago. Some time in the past, as in I ran into Barbara a while back but didn't get her new address, or John wrote me a while ago about his new baby. This term uses a while in the sense of “a short or moderate time,” a usage dating from about 1300.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Writer Greg Stolze posted a while back about “some professor” who “put googly eyes on a pencil and waved it at his class saying ‘Hi!

From The Wall Street Journal • May 3, 2026

“He’s an amazingly talented guy,” McDonald says of Puth, whom the Doobie Brothers frontman had been eager to write with since a mutual friend suggested it a while back.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 26, 2026

I went with my son to the Macedonia game a while back and the atmosphere at Old Trafford was electric.

From BBC • Oct. 9, 2025

“I remember one a while back that was a roller and those are scary because they keep going on, but this was a quick hit, was over and that’s it.”

From New York Times • Feb. 9, 2024

The fair was the county fair, which Maya-Jade and Mim had invited him to a while back.

From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.