Coming Up!
Friday, November 14th
6-7pm at Flow Chart Space
FREE
The Meanwhile : timelines of simultaneity
Ann Lauterbach reads from a series of quasi-sonnets, in which the natural linguistic field is broken by disparate invasions, rupturing the flow of meaning, and from her prose sequence, The Rains.
Introduced by Kostas Anagnopoulos.
The poems will accompanied by her photographic images.
meanwhile (n.)
also mean while, late 14c., "mean time, the interval between one specified period and another," from mean (adj.2) "middle, intermediate" + while (n.). From late 14c. as an adverb, "during or in a certain period of time." Properly two words as a noun but commonly written as one, after the adverb.
also from late 14c.
Entries linking to meanwhile
mean (adj.2)
"occupying a middle or intermediate place;" mid-14c., of persons, "of middle rank" (but this is possibly from, or mixed with, mean (adj.1)); from Anglo-French meines (plural), Old French meien, variant of moiien "mid-, medium, common, middle-class" (12c., Modern French moyen), from Late Latin medianus "of the middle," from Latin medius "in the middle" (from PIE root *medhyo- "middle").
From late 14c. as "in a middle state, between two extremes." Meaning "intermediate in time, coming between two events or points in time" is from mid-15c. (the sense in meanwhile, meantime). The mathematical sense "intermediate in a number of greater or lesser values, quantities, or amounts" is from late 14c.
while (n.)
Old English hwile, accusative of hwil "a space of time," from Proto-Germanic hwilo (source also of Old Saxon hwil, Old Frisian hwile, Old High German hwila, German Weile, Gothic hveila"space of time, while"), originally "rest" (compare Old Norse hvila "bed," hvild "rest"), from PIE kwi-lo-, suffixed form of root *kweie- "to rest, be quiet." Notion of "period of rest" became in Germanic "period of time."
Now largely superseded by time except in formulaic constructions (such as all the while). Middle English sense of "short space of time spent in doing something" now only preserved in worthwhile and phrases such as worth (one's) while. As a conjunction, "during or in the time that; as long as" (late Old English), it represents Old English þa hwile þe, literally "the while that." Form whiles is recorded from early 13c.; whilst is from late 14c., with unetymological -st as in amongst, amidst. Service while-you-wait is attested from 1911.