Word.ws English Dictionary

whiles away

whiles away is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 whiles away

What is whiles away the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Whiles away is the third-person singular simple present indicative of while away.

Words near whiles away in the dictionary

  1. whileens
  2. whilemeal
  3. whilend
  4. whilere
  5. whiles
  6. whiles away
  7. whilest
  8. whilever
  9. whiling
  10. whiling away
  11. whilk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whiles 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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