Whilom

Whilom (pronounced hwahy-luhm or wahy-luhm)

(1) Former; erstwhile (adjective); at one time; at time past (adverb) (both archaic).

(2) While (obsolete in general use but sometimes deployed as a literary device).

Circa 1200: Middle English from the pre-900 Old English hwīlum (at times), dative case of hwīl (while) and related to Old High German hwīlōm and German weiland (of old; formerly).  The meaning by circa 1200 was “at time past” and whilom was a commonly used conjunction from the 1610s and the spelling was for whatever reason the survivor of a few variations, something not unusual in the evolution of language.  In the Old English hwīlum was an adverb meaning "at times; in times passed" and that sense was picked up in the Middle English, the meaning “formerly” acquired in the twelfth century.  For centuries a staple a staple of educated English, use of the adverb dwindled toward the end of the nineteenth century but there was a last gasp, a brief popularity between the end of the Victorian era (1901) and the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918).  Whilom was drawn from Old English at a time when the language was heavily inflected, adjectives, nouns, and verbs adopting different endings depending on the job they were doing.  Whilom (then spelt hwilom), was the dative plural of hwil (which evolved into the Modern English while) but as English gradually abandoned its inflections, the word became a fossil, its ending stuck there permanently. 

The adjective whilom is one of four (the others being erstwhile, quondam and umquhile) with the same meaning (formerly; in the past) and it’s now flagged by most dictionaries as “obsolete”, more traditional editors preferring “archaic”.  The adjective appeared in the fifteenth century, intriguingly with the meaning "deceased" and it’s presumably this which influenced the meaning-shift towards "former" which by the nineteenth century universal although for those who wish to avoid “dead” but find “passed on” a bit naff, whilom might offer promise.

Whilom special friends, Samantha Ronson & Lindsay Lohan, Charlotte Ronson Spring 2009 Fashion Show, September 2008, New York City.

JM Barrie (1860-1937) used it in The Little White Bird (1903), writing “Whom did I see but the whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of these gardens” but even then “former” and “erstwhile” were beginning to be preferred although, perhaps predictably, that made it appeal to PG Wodehouse (1881-1975) who put in Heavy Weather (1933).  It’s seen now only in that graveyard of the linguistically anachronistic: the literary novel.