Word.ws English Dictionary

umwhile

umwhile adjective: erstwhile; late; former.

Adjective

umwhile (not comparable)

  1. (Scotland, dialectal, obsolete) Erstwhile; late; former.
    • which devolved on this unhappy woman by a settlement of her umwhile husband.1831, Sir Walter Scott, Waverly, or Six Years Since

Adverb

umwhile (not comparable)

  1. (Scotland, dialectal, obsolete) Formerly; late; whilom.

Origin of umwhile

From Middle English umwhile, umwhyle, umbewhile, from the phrase umbe while (literally “at times, at some time”). Analyzable as um- + while. More at while.

Questions about umwhile

What does umwhile mean?
Umwhile means erstwhile; late; former.
What part of speech is umwhile?
Umwhile can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near umwhile in the dictionary

  1. Umvuma
  2. UMWA
  3. umwelt
  4. umwelten
  5. umwelts
  6. umwhile
  7. umzimbeet
  8. Umzinto
  9. umZulu
  10. un
  11. UN General Assembly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: umwhile (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “umwhile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/umwhile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.