Knowing relations between words can help understand their meanings and build a more connected vocabulary network. Here, you can explore parents and offspring and discover the whole family.
- shows how many children or parents the word has
- get the translations and a link
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Sources for Etymology:
- Check "weile" on DWDS.de
Biggest German Dictionary, great for etymology, usage frequency and collocations) - "weile" on Wiktionary (English version)
(For etymological connections across European languages. Not always accurate) - Etymonline.com - Origins of English words
My favorite source for the origin of English words.
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how long is “eine Weile” actually. Someone at work was like “Machst du bald Schluß oder” or something and I was like “da ich spät angekommen bin bleibe ich noch eine weile hier” Then it occured to me that me that maybe half an hour or so might be too short?
So I clarified “eine halbe Stunde oder so”
Any thoughts?
LOL, that’s a question for philosophy :).
– Ich war schon eine Weile nicht mehr am Meer.
This can mean anything up to years, depending on the context. If you live at the sea, then it’ll be understood as days or weeks, if you’re landlocked, it could mean years.
In the context you suggested, using “Weile” means that it’s a “significant amount of time”. Like… “no point in waiting for me” or “man, it’s gonna be a long night with this project”.
I think for half an hour, I would use … half an hour. Or “ein bisschen”.
You’d use “Weile” if your goal is “substantial time within the context”
To add to that, “eine Weile” can also be seconds. Like with a computer slow booting for instance.