The story
- Old English · inherited fromhwīlende
- Middle English · inherited fromwhilende
- English todaywhilend
From Middle English whilende, whilwende, from Old English hwīlende, hwīlwende (“transitory, temporary, temporal”), from hwīl (“time, while”) + -wende (“moving, going about, turning”, suffix), equivalent to while + wending.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.