Word.ws English Dictionary

whiled away

whiled away is the simple past and past participle of while away.

Meaning of while away

Verb

while away (third-person singular simple present whiles away, present participle whiling away, simple past and past participle whiled away)

  1. (transitive) To spend (time) idly but pleasantly.
    • Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter II, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    beguile
  2. (intransitive) To elapse, to pass.
    • The rest of the night hours whiled away for the prisoners as few slept.2010, Lori Davis, Second Wind, page 65

Questions about whiled away

What is whiled away the simple past and past participle of?
Whiled away is the simple past and past participle of while away.

Words near whiled away in the dictionary

  1. while there's life, there's hope
  2. while we're young
  3. while you're down there
  4. while-ere
  5. whiled
  6. whiled away
  7. whileen
  8. whileens
  9. whilemeal
  10. whilend
  11. whilere

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whiled away (page history and authors); while away (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: “whiled away.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whiled_away. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.