Whilst

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:02 PM -0400 7/16/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>I sometimes say "whilst" and possibly always have. But I know better than to
>write it.
>I think it was proscribed somewhere.
>
>JL

For me, "whilst" for "while" is definitely a shibboleth for
[+British] or at least [-U.S.], although evidently not as useful a
one as I should have...er, would have thought.  Another one used to
be "torch" for 'flashlight', but I noticed the American military
personnel (even when there were no Brits around) in "The Hurt Locker"
used it regularly--maybe because it has one syllable fewer than
"flashlight"?  The reference was in situations in which every saved
syllable might be a matter of life or death.

LH

>
>On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:11 PM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
>>  Subject:      Whilst
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  A while ago, TZ and somebody - don't remember who - had a tiff about
>>  whether
>>  Americans say whilst. TZ was saying they do not. I agreed (quietly - I
>>  didn't write anything) at the time, thinking it mostly a Britism. Well,
>>  immediately thereafter I started hearing whilst all over the place on
>>  American TV shows. I thought: hmph. But then I thought: a lot of writers
>>  for
>>  US TV are Brits and Canadians as are many actors in the US. So maybe there
>>  was dialect leak going on, with American actors saying
>>  Brit/Canadian-written
>>  lines, or Brit/Canadian actors saying whilst and not knowing they're not
>>  supposed to. I was satisfied with that hypothesis until the other day I was
>>  watching CNN and the interviewee, the District Attorney of some Podunk
>>  county in Ohio, said whilst. So now I'm in a funk and don't know what to
>>  think. Maybe he is another sleeper spy who missed the ESL class on
>>  while/whilst and thus gave himself away, like when Tony Franciosa said
>>  loo-tenant instead of leff-tenant and gave himself away as not being a
>>  Brit.
>>  DAD
>>
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>
>
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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