Hey writers...can we retire the word, 'whilst' for awhile? Now I'm not saying it needs to be benched forever, but it couldn't hurt for it to observe from the sidelines for a bit, right? You don't need to play him every day, just once in awhile when you have a sentence that needs a conjunction with just a little extra whimsy in it, as a nod towards its Middle English roots. Or perhaps you want to make a character sound more British; either way, everything in moderation.

Whilst we are certainly guilty of overusing the word in pieces of writing wherein the tone is ostensibly American and the characters should be speaking American English (ie: color vs. colour, flashlight vs. torch, etc.) I think we can safely say that too much of a good thing (mostly a British, Middle English conjunction thing), just makes one sound like a pretentious toff.

(Quick! Brit-pick that sentence!)

Anyhow, let's shelf 'whilst' for a bit. If you really want to slip some Brit-isms into your everyday speech, go for something fun like, "all to cock", "balls up", "frig" and "frigging". (Not to be confused with "figging" which is a different thing altogether. Ahem.)

You can look that one up yourselves.