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Erstwhile   /ˈərstwˌaɪl/   Listen
Erstwhile

adjective
1.
Belonging to some prior time.  Synonyms: former, old, one-time, onetime, quondam, sometime.  "Our former glory" , "The once capital of the state" , "Her quondam lover"
adverb
1.
At a previous time.  Synonyms: at one time, erst, formerly, once.  "Her erstwhile writing" , "She was a dancer once"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Erstwhile" Quotes from Famous Books



... they stand In tattered, rude array, A remnant of that gallant band, Who erstwhile held the sea-girt strand Of Morris' isle, with iron hand 'Gainst Yankees' ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... room itself was deliciously familiar to him; crimson-curtained, green carpeted, shining with heavy gilt picture frames and prismatic chandeliers. Often with posies and candies and theater-tickets he had strutted across that erstwhile magic threshold and fairly lolled in the big deep-upholstered chairs while waiting for the silk-rustling advent of the ladies. But now, with his suitcase clutched in his hand, no Armenian peddler of laces and ointments could have felt more ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... pointing to a white speck in a green field. "Better run up quiet or she'll dash off like a deer," and making some mysterious sign to Jack, the erstwhile pathfinders darted off ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... cattle that were left had all run wild or perished from neglect. Wild beasts roamed round the outskirts of the half-deserted towns. A dense low scrub of yatais and of palmettos invaded all the pasture-lands, and in the erstwhile cultivated fields rank weeds sprang up, and choked the crops which in the Jesuits' times had made the mission territories the most productive of the American possessions of the Spanish crown. The churches were unserved, and in the evening air no ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... far back on his head as it could possibly be pushed with any hope of its staying there at all. He had a glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and he was raking his rowels rhythmically up and down the erstwhile varnished bar in buzzing accompaniment, the while he ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower


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