When you’re musing, daydreaming, or generally relaxing in an aimless sort of way, you might say that you’re “whiling away the time”. But you might instead say — and back in the day you could have been more likely to say — you’re “wiling away the time.”
“While” began to be used as a verb in the early 1600s. “While” had been around as a noun for centuries at that point; it comes from the Old English word “hwil,” and that goes back even further to Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and seems to have come from as far back as Proto-Indo-European. That last one wasn’t a real language; it’s a theoretical construction based on the connected roots of so many ancient languages. All the while, “while” meant pretty much what it still means today; a period of time.
Then around 1600s a new usage appeared: “Hee findes not any worthy employment to while himselfe withall.” That’s from Bishop John Hall’s “Meditations and Vowes Divine and Morall” in 1605. After many centuries of “while” being a duration, suddenly it had become something you could DO. Maybe people were discovering leisure time. In the mid 1600s another construction came into use: to “while off” — that was putting someone off for now: “If you cast them off too, when they have cast off all for you, or if you shall while them off, when they tell you, Sir, this is our last meale in the barrell.”
Then around the late 1700s some people began to spell “while” without the “h:” “He persuaded his sisters, therefore, to walk out with him, to wile away at once expectation and retrospection.” (“Camilla” by Frances Burney, 1796). This wasn’t a mistake; even famous writers like Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens used “wile” rather than “while:” “I was reading a book to-night to wilethe time away,” (“Oliver Twist”).
You might think this was just a spelling variation, but it might also be something deeper. The word “wile” already existed, and meant to be sneaky or tricky — and if you’re “wiling” time away you might be stealing time from your regular chores. This isn’t an isolated idea; the French phrase “tromper le temps” means the same thing, and so does the Latin phrase “decipere tempus.” Maybe I should rename this series decipere tempus…but never mind.
There’s a similar sense in the phrase “beguile the time”, which was used in the 1500s and 1600s by Shakespeare and others: “I will bespeake our dyet, Whiles you beguile the time.” (“Twelfth Night”). That phrase also carries the meaning of charming away some time in a clever or witty manner. So to “wile the time away” is actually a bit more meaningful than to simply “while the time,” which is just letting it pass.
“Wile away the time” is less common than “while away the time,” but it’s still in occasional use, and if you consult various references on usage, none of them will say that it’s wrong. Computer-based spellcheckers might complain, but come on, computers aren’t widely known to be charming, clever, or witty (quite the opposite; we’re constantly wiling away our time in the company of these dull, idea-killing, mindless machines). And even Sherlock Holmes once said “Yes; I will wile away the morning at Godolphin Street with our friends of the regular establishment.” (From The Adventure of the Second Stain).
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