Is anybody else bothered by the phrase "in the meanwhile?" [closed]

The way I understand the usage, it's "in the meantime," (phrase) and "meanwhile," (single word) and they are not exactly equivalent in meaning.

Then about 10 years ago, I started seeing "in the meanwhile" in published books, which makes me cringe like fingernails on a blackboard.

Solution 1:

Meanwhile (originally two words, mean while) combines mean (intermediate) and while (time period) to describe some interval between two events. It has two uses. The first is adverbial, equivalent to "during the interval defined", and it's this meaning that grates on you since the preposition in seems superfluous to requirements with the built-in meaning of during.

But per the OED, meanwhile is also a noun, defined as that intermediate interval. And it has been since the word entered the written language in the 1370s. As a noun, it has a natural home as the object of the preposition in.

The Ngram viewer finds the usage in the meanwhile in books published in 1800 and those published in 2000. In the meanwhile, the usage has been acceptable.

So you can stop cringing.