There is actually another definition of whilst. It also means “I am a prat, please kick me in the balls”.
Every so often, just to be obnoxious, my Dad uses “dastn’t”.
“Should we open another bottle of wine?”
“We dastn’t!”
I don’t know for sure if it’s a real word, but it’s real in our little world.
“Dastn’t”. Hee! I must append my vocabulary posthaste, methinks!
BTW, “methinks” is one that gets under my skin like scabies.
Lamest. Rant. Ever.
Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.
Um, you mean it has a certain **pathetic ** je ne sais quois.
I included “whilst” in a recent pit thread about usages that just make me want to screem. Another: “by the by.”
Whilst is bad alright.
That said; I HATE * ‘that said;’. * Please think of something else. My teeth hurt when I read it.
Oh, yeah…the “methinks” is right up there with “behest.” Don’t even THINK about it!
And then, after that, people who misspell pretentious phrases like “je ne sais quoi.” 
Anyone who types, or god forbid, actual speaks the word “methinks” deserves physical punishment IMO.
All this attention for “whilst” and none for “erstwhile”?
Meanwhile, erstwhile gets more and more jealous…
Sam
Please don’t stop me using ergo, I cannot spell therefore correctly consistantly.
My dad used this all the time when I was growing up. He used it to mean “ne’er-do-well” as in “your erstwhile brother”. It finally occurred to me to look it up and imagine my surprise when I discovered that it actually meant “former”…
Methinks the poster doth protest too much.
Even worse, IMO, for Britishism used by pretentious people:
Maths
AAARRRGGG
No wonder nobody reads my posts. 
You know, I think you could take the words objected to in this thread, and use them to reconstruct almost any post I’ve ever made here.
Does “whilst” really have the same pretentious feel to it in the UK as it does in the USA? When I hear Brits say it, it just sounds like part of the rest of the lingo: “Whilst I was putting the body in the boot…”
Whilst doesn’t strike me as pretentious at all–rather just a bit old fashioned. I’ve always wondered about it because, for the most part, it’s American English that has tended to retain archaisms like gotten and the present third person subjunctive.
Maths doesn’t strike me as pretentions either, only different. Also a bit harder to pronounce. Damn those fricative clusters.
That is the best explanation AND the funniest thing I have seen/heard in yonks Smeghead.
Bravo. Dude.
What’s your position on ‘perchance’?