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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
erstwhile
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He has won over many of his erstwhile critics.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ It was my erstwhile swain, looking much the same as 10 years earlier.
▪ Others say she avenges herself of the insult offered by her erstwhile lover by luring fishermen and other sailors to their doom.
▪ She certainly needed a cup of tea, even if her erstwhile visitor didn't.
▪ The movie theatres were showing well-made and respectable films to a large public that included many of their erstwhile critics.
▪ What were your options when an erstwhile love returned?
▪ With her erstwhile host's kind permission, she reminded herself bitterly.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Erstwhile

Erstwhile \Erst`while"\ (-hw[imac]l"), adv. Till then or now; heretofore; formerly. [Archaic]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
erstwhile

1560s, "formerly," from erst "first, at first; once, long ago; till now" (13c.), earlier erest from Old English ærest "soonest, earliest," superlative of ær (see ere) + while (adv.). As an adjective, "former," from 1903. Cognate with Old Saxon and Old High German erist, German erst.

Wiktionary
erstwhile

a. (context literary legal English) former, previous. adv. formerly; in the past.

WordNet
erstwhile
  1. adj. belonging to some prior time; "erstwhile friend"; "our former glory"; "the once capital of the state"; "her quondam lover" [syn: erstwhile(a), former(a), once(a), onetime(a), quondam(a), sometime(a)]

  2. adv. at a previous time; "once he loved her"; "her erstwhile writing" [syn: once, formerly, at one time, erst]

Usage examples of "erstwhile".

Thursday, 18870728:1600 George, Astoria and Van Deef sat before the erstwhile pastoral print.

As prisoners, however, they quickly proved docile and obedient to their captors, even to the point of assisting in drafting surrender appeals to their erstwhile comrades.

Sharpe suspected that the erstwhile Wagon Master General would be lucky to be a prisoner because if loup was fighting true to his reputation then it was more likely that Runciman was lying slaughtered in his bed with his flannel nightdress and tasselled woollen cap soaked in blood.

There were the Abbaye and the Luxembourg, the erstwhile convents of the Visitation and the Sacre-Coeur, the cloister of the Oratorians, the Salpetriere, and the St.

By 1931 the Labour Zionist leaders in Palestine began to envision a victorious Hitler, but they had no alternative stratagems for the SPD and there is no record of the Poale Zion leaders in Palestine ever publicly quarrelling with their erstwhile comrades in the SPD leadership.

In these circumstances, the Kellogg-Briand language of peace became, rhetorically and legally, a double-edged sword: used, in the new draft constitution, to protect the emperor even as it was being unsheathed to cut down his erstwhile officers and officials.

He had paused before the sabha hall doors to look at his childhood friend, gurukul partner, erstwhile charioteer, trusted adviser, then minister, and now prime minister.

Ori knew his seditionist ex-friends, his erstwhile comrades, would be there as the commonalty rose.

Knowing The Shadow to be Cranston, Yeddo was duplicating the nonchalance of his erstwhile prisoner.

In the delicious contemplation of Hortensia in tears beside him stricken all but to the point of death, he forgot entirely his erstwhile scruples that being nameless he had no name to offer her.

Since the manjack had never been boresighted, they did not even strike their erstwhile target, which continued on towards its objective oblivious of being fired at.

It would be weeks, perhaps months before he could see how completely his erstwhile friend had accomplished, in reverse, the redrafting job on his face for which he had longed.

Julia, promoted to second mate after the death of Sweor Tobregdan, was seeing to the erstwhile neogi slaves, teaching them what she could about ship routine and explaining their duties.

Blenkinthrope shrank from the society of his erstwhile travelling companions and took to travelling townwards by an earlier train.

It was, so people said, the work of an erstwhile veterinary surgeon, and showed a number of life-size horses in a meadow, fantastic horses, blue, violet, and pink, whose astonishing anatomy transpierced their sides.