喜樂美語
  1. 1

    Erstwhile means “former” or “in the past”: an erstwhile colleague, an erstwhile home, an erstwhile friend. In current English it is almost only an adjective, and it sounds literary or newspaper-stylish — a little old, a little . People reach for it when they want “ex-” or “former” with a raised : that job, that title, that friendship is over. You would not use it as a time phrase in ordinary speech. It does not mean “for a while” and it does not mean “a while ago”. An erstwhile friend is an ex-friend, not a friend you have only known for a little while.

    昔日的；從前的（書面）

    例句逐字對照、搭配詞、易混淆字

    這一義的完整解析還沒打開。訂閱後可以看到例句怎麼拆、常跟哪些字一起出現， 以及容易跟它搞混的字。

    看看訂閱內容

組成erst (“formerly, in the old days”) + while (“a stretch of time”).

同家族的字

  • erstan old English word meaning formerly; it is the first half
  • whilethe second half is the ordinary word while, a stretch of time

原始詞典資料3 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

erstwhileadv/ˈɜː(ɹ)st.waɪl/

  • 1

    formalliteraryFormerly; in the past.

erstwhileadj/ˈɜː(ɹ)st.waɪl/

  • 1

    literarylawFormer, previous.

    • “Scarcely had Alice reached her twentieth birthday, than she gave her erstwhile fiancée^([sic]) his formal congé.[…]”
    • As an aftermath of the erstwhile competition between companies, 41 goods depots served the Liverpool and Birkenhead docks in 1923.
  • 2

    Respected, honourable.

    • If you're for one of my erstwhile opponents, that's O.K. Just don't work too hard.

資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。