while

1. (Northern England, Scotland) Until.Examples: "I'll wait while you've finished painting."; "To dark is still used in Swaledale (Yorkshire) in the sense of to lie hid, as, 'Te rattens [rats] mun ha bin darkin whel nu [till now]; we hannot heerd tem tis last fortnith'."Synonyms: tillNorthern-EnglandScotland

1. (Northern England, Scotland) Until.Examples: "I may be conveyed into your chamber; I'll lie under your bed while midnight."Northern-EnglandScotland

1. (transitive, now only in combination with away; see also while away) To pass (time) idly.Examples: "I whiled away the hours whilst waiting for him to arrive"; "Some were whiling the time by admiring the figures on the cloth of tissue."; "Here in seclusion, as a widow may, / The lovely lady whiled the hours away, […]"Synonyms: idle, laze, lounge, loiterin-compoundstransitive

2. (transitive) To occupy or entertain (someone) in order to let time pass.Examples: "They whiled them with such answere as suted to their purposes, and long adoe was made in weaving and unweaving Penelopes web, till the Spanish Armada was upon the Coast, and the very Ordnance proclaimed in their eares a surcease from further illusions."; "He sat her on the corner of the carpenter's bench, and parried or diverted her questions about her father, and the desirability of wakening him by handing her the long curled shavings; and when these palled, he whiled her on by the impossible task of teaching him her version of the 'Three Golden Balls' a blank-verse poem, but rhythmically intoned, which he had taught her."; "In other worlds I whiled me now Through many a dark night long."transitive

3. (intransitive, archaic) To elapse, to pass.Examples: "The tedious hours whiled slowly on, 'till the succeeding afternoon, when the expected carriage made its appearance much sooner than they had promised themselves."; "Years whiled. He aged, sank, sickened; and was not: / And it was said, 'A man intractable / And curst is gone.'"archaicintransitive