Is there a difference between "among" and "amongst"?

[MsAmerica]

The press liaison at the White House used "amongst," and it struck me as an example of an insecure person trying to sound educated. But perhaps I was being unjust.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, during her White House press briefing, described the messaging thread “as a policy discussion, surely a sensitive policy discussion, amongst high-level Cabinet officials and senior staff.”

I remember a linguistics professor at uni telling us that he really hated use of “whilst” instead of “while”. I imagine amongst vs among is the same. Not sure I hate them like he did but their use always sounds a bit daft to me.

Sounds kind of 19th century to me.

:)

No there's no difference. I always correct whilst to while and amongst to among.

If there's no difference, what are you correcting?

Among = present /Amongst = past, no?

If I were being polite, I’d say ‘amongst’ was slightly more formal, or archaic, in register. If I were being less polite, I’d say it was prissy.

I find ‘whilst’ immensely prissy. My mental image of ‘whilst’ involves a child Jacob Rees-Mogg wearing a Little Lord Fauntleroy costume.

I tend to interpret "amongst" as involving everyone or everything in a group; "among" as involving a subset of a group. But I am probably mistaken grammatically 🙂.

I’ve noticed that it’s always “whilst” on MN, never “while”.

I don't think whilst and while are interchangeable. I'd say 'whilst I agree with x, I have to disagree with y'. I wouldn't say 'while I agree...' because that has a sense of impermanence, it suggests that at some point I might no longer agree with x, at which point all bets are off and I might or might not disagree with y. In other words while introduces something that's conditional. As in 'do not cross while lights show '.

Whilst on the other hand denotes a clear separation rather than a dependency. For example 'Whilst I think Trump is unfit for office I have to acknowledge that many Americans disagree'.

"Among" and "amongst" mean the same thing, but "among" is much more common in American English. "Amongst" is more often used in British English, with "among" used as well.

The same distinction applies to "while" and "whilst."

I'm an editor and it's part of our style rules.

I'd say whilst and amongst are used more in northern England and are more traditional instances of language use. Not exactly archaic (they are in everyday use still) but not likely to be found in consciously modern usage either.

As for meaning, I think there's a very nuanced difference, much as @MontyDonsBlueScarf outlined.

Interesting. If it requires guidance it does suggest that someone somewhere had decided that there is a difference and one is "wrong". Sorry, realise I'm coming across as pernickety! Maybe I'm just feeling irritable because I use both whilst and amongst without really thinking about it. I'm Scottish though. Maybe it's not used so much in the South (where I live, so you'd think I'd have noticed!)

I was told that 'while' is used to describe time and 'whilst' is used when comparing..

It's part of our plain English guidelines. There is no difference in meaning, just archaic extra letters.

Amongst is older; it’s not wrong, per se. But I always correct amongst to among and whilst to while (Br Eng editor).

I’m not sure I’d agree. Both amongst and whilst are on their way out in Br Eng too.

I realize that my post was a bit unclear. To the extent that amongst and whilst are used at all, they are features of British English. They pop up fairly often on Mumsnet.

The words are virtually non-existent in American English. It's among and while all the way.

I use among and amongst, and while and whilst but I don’t know when or why.

I'm wondering if it's an ease of pronounciation thing. Like using 'a' or 'an'. Eg 'Amongst everything' seems to flow better when spoken than 'among everything'. Whereas 'among them' sounds better than 'amongst them'. Dunno, what do you think?

Lol, @Spiaggio, I agree.

Okay, but then why not with everything?

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