whilom
Americanadjective
adverb
adverb
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012adjective
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Etymology
Origin of whilom
before 900; Middle English; Old English hwīlum at times, dative plural of hwīl while (noun)
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.
Schine imagines the stories that words hold for the twins, words like “whilom,” which “was light and airy and lost, like a lady in a white nightgown wandering through a field of flowers filmed over with dewdrops.”
From New York Times
But answer fairly, whilom pup, Are these full proof of growing up?
From Project Gutenberg
For I have heard it said by those who have to do with college discipline that their alumni are no longer invariably distinguished by 'a gentle nature and studious habits'--qualities for which, as the Warden of Merton says, colleges were originally intended to provide a welcome haven of rest, and which are now the especial and gratifying characteristics of that whilom roisterer and boon companion, the Unattached Student.
From Project Gutenberg
But of all these things I shall entreat more largely, when I set forth my book entitled Antipolemus, which whilom when I was at Rome I wrote to Julius, bishop of Rome, the second of that name, at the same time, when he was counselled to make war on the Venetians.
From Project Gutenberg
But that he did yet so dearly affection him that, understanding we had sometimes tidings of Mr. Martin, by whose means he had mostly been moved to this lamentable defection, he should be contented to hear somewhat of his whilom son, still dear to him, albeit estranged.
From Project Gutenberg
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.
