Tom watched in horror as the erstwhile contents of his grocery bags cascaded down the flight of stairs.
Source: tatoeba (9519278)
Erstwhile
//ˈɝst.waɪl//
Synonyms for "erstwhile" (64 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (13)
Adjective(3 words)
Adverb(1 words)
Strong matches (19)
Related words (32)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Antonyms
1 entriesSynonyms
3 entriesderived from
1 entrieshas context
3 entriesrelated to
6 entriessimilar
2 entriesTranslations
32 translations across 17 languages.
Azerbaijani
1 entries- əvvəlki adj (former, previous)
Chinese Cantonese
2 entries- 以前嘅 adj (former, previous)
- 過去嘅 /过去嘅 adj (former, previous)
Czech
2 entries- bývalý adj (former, previous)
- někdejší adj (former, previous)
Dutch
3 entries- toenmalig adj (former, previous)
- voormalig adj (former, previous)
- vroeger adj (former, previous)
Esperanto
1 entries- antaŭa adj (former, previous)
Finnish
3 entries- aiempi adj (former, previous)
- entinen adj (former, previous)
- varhempi adj (former, previous)
French
2 entries- ancien adj (former, previous)
- d'autrefois adj (former, previous)
Galician
2 entries- anterior adj (former, previous)
- previo adj (former, previous)
German
3 entries- ehemalig adj (former, previous)
- früher adj (former, previous)
- vormalig adj (former, previous)
Greek
1 entries- πρώην adj (former, previous)
Norwegian
1 entries- fordums adj (former, previous)
Polish
2 entries- były adj (former, previous)
- dawny adj (former, previous)
Portuguese
1 entries- anterior adj (former, previous)
Russian
2 entries- было́й adj (former, previous)
- пре́жний adj (former, previous)
Serbo-Croatian
1 entries- пређашње adj (former, previous)
Swedish
4 entries- före detta adj (former, previous)
- föregående adj (former, previous)
- förre adj (former, previous)
- tidigare adj (former, previous)
Ukrainian
1 entries- коли́шній adj (former, previous)
Sample sentences
8 total sentences available.
The erstwhile Jewish communities of North Africa dated to before the arrival of the first Arabs.
Source: tatoeba (11497206)
My erstwhile colleague kept me up-to-date with the company gossip.
Source: tatoeba (11516611)
The erstwhile lovers chatted and caught up.
Source: tatoeba (11564195)
Showing 4 of 8 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.