a while back

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

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

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“We called a shop in Austin a while back: ‘Hey, it’s a 17-year-old — think you can do it?’

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A while back, he had written out a list of goals in a diary: cleaning up his act, going back to school and planned to get married.

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Referring to side-by-side photos of Kardashian from a while back and from the recent Bezos-Sánchez wedding in Venice, Betteridge said she “looks dramatically different from a few years ago, and whether you see it as glow-up or glam makeover, there’s no denying she’s created a bold new look for herself.”

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The State Department Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Darren Beattie said it most plainly in a post on X a while back: “Competent white men must be put in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

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Related Words

• already 
• earlier www.thesaurus.com
• heretofore 
• once