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''wile'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260130210911-00-⌔

wile - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

wile (plural wiles)

  • (usually in the plural) 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.1
    • ✤ *to frustrate all our plots and wiles *2
    • ✤ Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.3

Verb

wile (third-person singular simple present wiles, present participle wiling, simple past and past participle wiled)

  • (transitive) 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.4

Verb

wile

  • Misspelling of while (“to pass the time”).
    • ✤ Here’s a pleasant way to wile away the hours.
    • ✤ “A fear of what?” asked the gentleman, who seemed to pity her.
      “I scarcely know of what,” replied the girl. “I wish I did. Horrible thoughts of death, and shrouds with blood upon them, and a fear that has made me burn as if I was on fire, have been upon me all day. I was reading a book to-night, to wile the time away, and the same things came into the print.”      5

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /waɪl/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -aɪl
  • Homophone: while

Etymology 1

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.

Etymology 2

The phrase meaning to pass time idly is while away. We can trace the meaning in an adjectival sense for while back to Old English, hwīlen, “passing, transitory”. It is also seen in whilend, “temporary, transitory”. But since wile away occurs so often, it is now included in many dictionaries.

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London: ↩

  2. 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a] nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a] nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1796, George Washington, “Farewell Address”, American Daily Advertiser: ↩

  4. 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide: ↩

  5. 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Oliver Twist; […], volume, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC: ↩

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Secondary

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