whenever

UK/wəˈnɛvə/US/wəˈnɛvɚ/

adverbB12 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #980 of 15,258leans spoken

Whenever means at any time that something happens. Every single time, without exception.

It joins two clauses, as in whenever it rains, the roof leaks. It has a second use meaning at whatever time you like, which is why come whenever is a friendly thing to say. Spoken flatly it becomes dismissive, since answering whenever to a question about timing means you do not much care. Do not confuse it with when ever, written as two words, which is used for emphasis in questions.

Definitions of whenever

1adverbwheneverAt any and every time that something happens.B1~54%
“Whenever he calls, she is out.”
2adverbwhateverAt whatever time is convenient.B1~46%
“Come round whenever you like.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Where it comes from

Middle English
whan evere
English, today
whenever

From Middle English whan evere, whanne ever, whanne evere, whener, when ever; equivalent to when + -ever.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

whenever in the wild

Miss Scrimmage uses her shotgun whenever she finds the boys on her property (usually after lights out) resulting in Mr.
Macdonald Hall
Thus, whenever traffic for C arrives at either A or B, it will loop endlessly between A and B, unless some mechanism exists to prevent that behaviour.
Routing loop
Jon Mess stated, "Then basically came up with the idea that could just break up the band whenever, but do this record first and see what happens.
Downtown Battle Mountain II
Open subtitles are always shown whenever the video is played because they are part of it.
Subtitles
Fundamental error is a legal term provided by United States courts to describe an error which occurs whenever a judgement violates a federal fundamental right.
Fundamental error

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Definitions of whenever

1adverbwheneverAt any and every time that something happens.B1~54%

“Whenever he calls, she is out.”

2adverbwhateverAt whatever time is convenient.B1~46%

“Come round whenever you like.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.