Does 'a while' always mean a while?

I sometimes read trashy alternative news reports from dubious 'news' sites because they somehow enter my feed. Only such sites will report on the TikTok postings of people who really don't know much about the subject they talk about. A few days ago, one such dubious site reported on the TikTok post of a woman who says she's from Montana and has lived in Singapore for the past 10 months. In the post, she talks about 'the hardest Singlish phrase' she's encountered. She recounts the story of a medical appointment she had. She was told by a nurse, 'Please go have a seat, wait a while and the nurse will be out to collect you'. She says the nurse said it with a friendly smile and since she isn't a confrontational person, she just sat down, but 'inside, [she] was flabbergasted'. She was upset that the nurse could say that with a smile on her face. She goes on to say on TikTok, 'Doesn't she understand what she just said?' 

If, like me, you are flabbergasted as to what on earth this Montanan woman means, don't worry. The whole English-speaking world will be similarly flabbergasted unless they too hail from that rustic state of Montana - I'm of course assuming Montanans are just as clueless as she is about the English language. She goes on to say that in the US, if you tell someone to 'wait a while', you will have to apologise because it means he has to wait for a rather long time. If the time is short, you say 'wait a moment'. 

Whatever she does in Singapore, I really hope she doesn't teach English. 'A while' means exactly the same thing in the US and in everywhere else on the planet. I know I have criticised the Merriam-Webster Dictionary elsewhere on this blog but if we want an authority on American English, we need to have recourse to that dictionary. This is what the Merriam-Webster dictionary says is the definition of 'while': 

a period of time especially when short and marked by the occurrence of an action or a condition

The dictionary proceeds to give an example of its use: 'stay here for a while'. 

British dictionaries give the same definition, as do the dictionaries of other English-speaking countries.

The Cambridge online dictionary gives the definition of 'awhile' as 'for a short time' and gives this for an example: 

Let's wait awhile and see what happens.

Here's a report from the BBC on advice from the UK police about scams from crooks who pretend to be from the HMRC (His Majesty's Revenue and Customs - the UK tax department):

HMRC will never ring you and demand payment. If you get a call from a company, wait a while and then ring the company's number and ask them whether they were ringing for you.

Again, anyone who has the most elementary understanding of the English language must know that you only have to wait a very short while (perhaps a minute or less) before ringing the company's number.

I think we can now all agree that the Montanan woman is totally wrong to say that 'wait a while' used by the Singaporean nurse is 'the hardest Singlish phrase' she has ever encountered.  'Wait a while' is used all over the world to mean to wait for a short time. Any English-speaking person from India to Ireland and from New York to New Zealand understands it to mean 'a short time'.  It's by no means a Singlish phrase. 

Just in case you think hip people in the US speak differently, let's look at how the most hip of all hip hop artistes use the word 'while'. You can't get more hip than the Grammy Award-winning hip hop group, The Fugees, whose famous song goes:

            I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style
            And so I came to see him, and listen for a while

The meaning is clear to any English-speaking person. He wants to listen for a while = a short time. 

You may be wondering how the Montanan woman could be so dreadfully wrong in her understanding of a simple English phrase and mistook it for the hardest Singlish phrase she's ever heard. Could it be that she has very little contact with people generally? I can imagine what Montana is like. It's bear country, folks. I know all about that because I was once chased by a bear in a place not far from Montana. If you live in Montana, you probably have very little interaction with other people. You always have to be on the lookout for prowling bears. You haven't got time to think about what 'a while' really means and how it can be used in the different contexts of social interaction. When a bear chases you, you just make a dash for your car and drive away. You can't scream at the bear 'Wait a while!' and hope that the Montanan bear will share our Montanan woman's misunderstanding of how long 'a while' really should be. 

I know the reason for her shocking error. Her error stems from a failure to understand what most linguists assert to be the most important part of language - context. You cannot possibly communicate with anyone around you if there is no context. We can say 'Wait a while' and be easily understood to mean 'wait a short while' or we can say it in a manner which leaves no doubt in the listener's mind that he has to wait for hours. Much depends on context. While it is true that the dictionary definition for 'a while' is 'a short period of time', the context can change the length of time significantly. This is true of any word in the English language and it's true of other languages too. 

I would never have believed that the day would come when I would have to explain such a basic principle of the English language to an English-speaking person - I suppose people in Montana do speak English. The default meaning of 'a while' must always be 'a short space of time'. No doubt about that. But does 'a while' always mean a while? Of course not. Context is crucial. If I say, 'You will only have to wait a while' and I say it, as the nurse did, with a smile, nobody except our Montana woman will be flabbergasted. All reasonable people who speak English must understand that to mean a short time. 'Only' helps to make it clear. Let's leave out such 'helping' words. 

'You will have to wait a while'.  This time, any English-speaking person will interpret that to mean you will have to wait for a time longer than expected. Similarly, 'It's going to take a while'.  Why the difference? Can we say that the semi-auxiliary gives a different complexion to the sentence? Not quite. 'I'm willing to wait a while (but not for an hour)'. 'I'm able to wait a while (but surely anything more than 15 minutes is unreasonable?)'.

We can think of countless examples where 'a while' denotes a longer time frame than what 'a while' should really mean. 'We haven't seen each other for a while' where a while = a long time. 'The divorce happened a while ago' - certainly not recently!

As we can see, context is crucial. Sometimes, there can be room for ambiguity. Your daughter's date is at the door and your daughter is still putting on her makeup. You tell her date, 'She'll be ready in a while'. Most likely, unless the date is from Montana, most English-speaking people will take that to mean that she will be ready in a short time. But it's always safer to leave no room for ambiguity. You don't really know if the date is our Montanan woman's brother! A linguistically careful father will say 'She'll be ready in just a little while'. A smile helps of course. I really don't believe even the Montanan woman will be flabbergasted by that. 

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