Tuesday 10 February 2015

Toilet humour

The disabled persons' toilet in our local music school has a disco in it.  No kidding: when you go in, different coloured strobes start to flash, a glittering ball spins and disco music plays.  As I reflected on the implications of this for wheelchair-bound people, it struck me that for me, anyway, dancing at the same time as using the toilet for its usual purpose would be a bad idea.


The trouble is, I was then asked when one uses "whilst" as opposed to "while".  Tricky one, that.

6 comments:

Tim Trent said...

One uses 'whilst' to show one can!

I looked them up, since I am an inveterate user of whilst. While and whilst mean the same when we use them as conjunctions. They both mean ‘during the time that something else happens’, or ‘in contrast with something else’. While is much more common than whilst, and whilst sounds more formal:

Tim Trent said...

I wonder if the mirrorball is still in the gentlemen's toilet in The Regency Tavern in Brighton. It is over five years since I visited it last.

Mark In Mayenne said...

I used it to match the formality of the request :)

ShinyNewThing said...

In the Comms world, 'whilst' and other 'st' type words are considered archaic and poor style, so I've been trained to always change it to 'while' in anything I am editing/writing.

James Higham said...

Sumwon can clerlee speek Inglish in that loo.

Mark In Mayenne said...

It's certainly archaic, but I like the formal style :)

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