Contextualizebeta

wile

noun
/waɪl/

Etymology

From Middle English wile, wyle, from Old Northern French wile (“guile”) and Old English wīl (“wile, trick”) and wiġle (“divination”), from Proto-Germanic *wīlą (“craft, deceit”) (from Proto-Indo-European *wey- (“to turn, bend”)) and Proto-Germanic *wigulą, *wihulą (“prophecy”) (from Proto-Indo-European *weyk- (“to consecrate, hallow, make holy”)). Cognate with Icelandic vél, væl (“artifice, craft, device, fraud, trick”), Dutch wijle. Doublet of guile.

  1. derived from *weyk-✻
  2. derived from *wigulą✻
  3. derived from *wey-✻
  4. derived from *wīlą✻
  5. derived from wīl
  6. derived from wile
  7. derived from wile

Definitions

  1. A trick or stratagem practiced for ensnaring or deception

    A trick or stratagem practiced for ensnaring or deception; a sly, insidious artifice

    • He was seduced by her wiles.
    • "Anything interesting among your letters, Geoffrey?" asked Miss Tilehurst, concealing a protective curiosity under this sociable wile, since she had already inspected the covers.
    • to frustrate all our plots and wiles

  2. To entice or lure.

    • He was good to look on, brawly dressed, and with a tongue in his head that would have wiled the bird from the tree.

  3. Misspelling of while (“to pass the time”).

    • Here's a pleasant way to wile away the hours.
  4. ›+ 2 more definitions

    1. A surname transferred from the nickname.

    2. A male given name transferred from the surname.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for wile. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA