LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR AND KNITTING, OH MY

[emilly]

why do I have three separate pairs of 3.25mm circular needles? I have never needed any 3.25mm circular needles!

more importantly, why did i not read the pattern properly before working on it for two evenings? huh? WOULD IT HAVE BEEN SO HARD?

excuse me while i rip everything out.

QUICK, A QUESTION:

is there a significant difference between "whilst" and "while"?

Comments

[evil-s.livejournal.com]

A. The number of letters! :P

[mystefaction.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! I know this! One has a mutated vestigial genitive case marker and one does not!

...so basically, no. *g*

[talissarocsham.livejournal.com]

When I started the cross-stitch I'm currently working on, the fabric was portrait rather than landscape.

Yeah.

That was fun.

So in short, I sympathise!

[chrisjohnstone.livejournal.com]

I can't explain why you didn't read the pattern properly. It's a tragic, um, moment or day or something...

And, yes, there is a difference between whilst and while. I only know this though because it formed a part of a recent conversation that was sort of 'what are the stupidest things referees and editors of journals have complained about?'

I could be misremembering this, but, basically I think it's something like this...

'Whilst' has basically been replaced by 'while' in modern English, but whereas both words mean 'notwithstanding' or 'at the same time that', 'while' has also picked up the meaning 'by comparison' or 'in contrast' which fuzzies up the temporal definiteness of 'whilst'.

'Antechinus at Site A had a mean mass of 23g whilst those at site B had a mean mass of 30g' is preferred if the measurements were taken concurrently (i.e. you took all the antechinus back to the lab and measured them on the same day).

'Antechinus at Site A had a mean of 5.2 pouch young while those at site B had a mean of 7.0' is preferred if the measurements are not concurrent, perhaps lagging by a day or two.

I think...

To be honest, it's a pretty minor split difference and I could be incorrectly remembering the whole conversation incorrectly. I have a feeling there are more proper, technical, grammary differences too. Is 'whilst' considered more correct for first person? I'm not sure.

[thomasbull.livejournal.com]

Besides being a synonym for whilst, while can also be used as a noun (as in "a short while") or a verb (as in "to while away time").