Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Battle of the moguls. 'Awhile' versus 'a while.' Crittador.

Episode Summary

1160. This week, we look at why "mogul" means both a ski bump and a powerful person. Then, we tackle when to use "awhile" versus "a while," with a trick to help you remember.

Episode Notes

1160. This week, we look at why "mogul" means both a ski bump and a powerful person. Then, we tackle when to use "awhile" versus "a while," with a trick to help you remember.

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Episode Transcription

Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and today, we're going to talk about moguls and the word "awhile."

Mogul

by Mignon Fogarty

Last week, when I was working on the segment about words you'll hear during the Winter Olympics, I realized there was enough to say about the word "mogul" that I could do a whole piece on it. First, there's the winter sports meaning. But then there's the completely unrelated "powerful person meaning" — as in "media mogul" or "movie mogul." Same spelling, totally different origins. So today, we'll look at both of them, plus a couple of bonus meanings I found along the way.

The Ski Bumps

If you've ever been on a steep ski slope and found yourself bouncing over rounded mounds of packed snow — ranging in size from a throw pillow to a giant bean bag chair, but harder — you've experienced moguls. Skiers actually cause the moguls themselves as they carve their turns, pushing the snow into mounds along the way. And once a mogul starts to form, it tends to get bigger as more skiers wind their way around it, deepening the troughs and packing more snow onto the bump.

Sources don't completely agree on the origin of the name for this kind of mogul. Etymonline says it's probably from a Scandinavian source, comparing it to a Norwegian dialect word meaning "a heap" or "a mound." But most other sources point to a southern German dialect word meaning "mound" or "hillock." Regardless of the origin, though, the idea is the same: it comes from a word meaning a small hill or mound. And that's essentially what a skiing mogul is.

As for when the word entered English, the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1953, where a writer for the Albuquerque Journal describes watching skiers "turning and jumping over the moguls." The writer then explains that moguls are bumps, which suggests the word was still pretty new.

Mogul skiing eventually became a competitive sport, and the first major mogul competition took place in 1971. Moguls appeared as a demonstration event at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, and by the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, moguls had become an official medal event. And it was actually the first freestyle skiing discipline to earn that status. This year, we have another new mogul competition too because the dual mogul competition is making its Olympic debut.

The Powerful Person

But there's another kind of "mogul" too — the one you see in phrases like "media mogul" or "movie mogul." This one has a completely different backstory, and it goes all the way back to the Mughal Empire, spelled M-U-G-H-A-L. And yes, that word is related to "Mongol" — as in Mongolia. 

The Mughal Empire of India was founded in 1526 by Babur, a prince from what is now Uzbekistan. And his family tree was pretty impressive: he was a descendant of the Turkic conqueror Timur on his father's side and Genghis Khan on his mother's side. And his descendants ruled a huge swath of South Asia for more than three centuries. At its height, the Mughal Empire was one of the biggest and wealthiest empires in the world, and it produced, among other things, the Taj Mahal.

Europeans who had contact with the Mughal Empire were awed by its wealth and power and especially around the time of Babur's grandson, Akbar the Great, began referring to the ruler as "the Great Mogul" or "the Grand Mogul." 

The word "Mughal" itself — spelled all sorts of ways over the centuries — comes from Persian and Arabic words for "Mongol," according to Etymonline, referring to Babur's descent from Genghis Khan.

By the mid-1600s, people were using "mogul" — lowercase — as a general label for anyone who wielded enormous power or influence. The OED dates this broader sense to 1653, when it appeared in a satirical English publication called "Mercurius Democritus."

And it's interesting to see how this word for power has paired up with different industries over time. A Google Ngram search shows that "movie mogul" was the go-to pairing for most of the 1900s. For example, people used it to talk about the Hollywood studio heads of the Golden Age. But around 1990, "media mogul" became more popular, which makes sense given the rise of media conglomerates and figures who controlled television, newspapers, and eventually digital media. The powerful people weren't in control of just movies anymore.

Playing Cards

And while I was reading through the OED's entry on "mogul," I came across an obsolete meaning I'd never seen before. From about the 1740s through the 1870s, a "Mogul" was a playing card — specifically one stamped with a drawing of the Great Mogul emperor to suggest it was a high-quality card. A manufacturer named Blanchard first used the Great Mogul stamp in 1741, and it became such a popular symbol of quality that other manufacturers started using it too. By 1842, an article in Bradshaw's Journal said "the best cards are called Moguls." And in 1853, a weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens called Household Words said that if a card had no speck or blemish, it was "laid aside as a Mogul."

There was even a lawsuit over it. Etymonline cites a 1742 court case — Blanchard versus Hill — in which Blanchard sought an injunction to stop a competitor from stamping his cards with the Great Mogul design. (Essentially, an 18th-century trademark dispute.) Blanchard lost, and after that, any card maker could use the Great Mogul stamp — and many did.

The Locomotive

And one more. The OED also records a railroad meaning: a "Mogul" was a heavy-duty steam engine. According to the OED, these Moguls were first built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia in 1867, and the name appears in print by 1877. And this meaning does trace back to the "powerful person" meaning — the locomotives were named for their strength and pulling power.

Summary

So there you have it:

The skiing mogul comes from either a German or Scandinavian word for a small mound, and it entered English in the mid-1900s along with the growth of recreational skiing.

The "powerful person" mogul traces back to the Mughal emperors of India — themselves descended from the Mongols — and it's been in English since the 1650s. Along the way, the powerful-person meaning was also used as branding for high-quality playing cards and as the name for a powerful steam locomotive.

So the next time you hear someone referred to as a "media mogul" or you watch a skier barrel down a mogul course at the Olympics, you'll know those two "moguls" arrived in English by completely different paths — one from the snow-covered slopes of German-speaking Europe, and the other from the name for one of the wealthiest empires in history.

Works Cited

Harper, Douglas. "Mogul." Online Etymology Dictionary. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.etymonline.com/word/mogul.

"Mogul, n.1." Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mogul_n1.

"Mogul, n.2." Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mogul_n2.

"Mogul." Dictionary.com. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mogul.

"Mogul." American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=mogul.

"Bābur." EncyclopÌdia Britannica. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Babur.

"Mughal Dynasty." EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mughal-dynasty.

"Great Mogul Playing Cards." The World of Playing Cards. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.wopc.co.uk/brands/great-mogul-playing-cards.

"Freestyle Skiing." Olympics.com. International Olympic Committee. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://www.olympics.com/en/sports/freestyle-skiing/.

"Mogul Skiing." Wikipedia. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogul_skiing.

"2-6-0." Wikipedia. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-6-0.

Google Books Ngram Viewer. "_NOUN mogul," 1800–2022. Accessed February 8, 2026. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=_NOUN+mogul&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/a-while-versus-awhile/

‘A While’ Versus ‘Awhile’

by Mignon Fogarty

Do you know when to write "awhile" as one word and "a while" as two words? I confess that I often have to look it up, so let's see if I can help you and myself remember in the future. 

So “a while” as two words describes a time, a noun. The article “a” before the word “while” is a sure sign that you’re dealing with a noun. Notice how in the following sentence that you could replace “a while” with another article-noun combination such as “a year”:

[You could say] It’s been a while since Squiggly tried marmite.

[And you could say] It’s been a year since Squiggly tried marmite.

Both of those sentences describe a length of time: “a while” is more general and “a year” is more specific, but they’re both a length of time. (Actually, when you use “a year” like that, it’s usually also at least somewhat general because it probably hasn’t been exactly a year since Squiggly tried marmite. But you get the idea.)

“Awhile” as one word means “for a time,” and it’s an adverb. Notice in the following sentence how you could replace “awhile” with another adverb such as “quietly”:

[You could say] Go play awhile.

[And you could say] Go play quietly.

You wouldn't say, "Go play a year" or "Go play an hour," so you know you don't want the two-word noun version, “Go play a while.” You want the one-word adverb: “Go play awhile.”

Finally, just to make it confusing, if you rephrase “Go play awhile” and replace the adverb with a prepositional phrase, you need the noun again because an adverb can’t be the object of the preposition.

[So you have] Go play awhile. (where the adverb is modifying the verb)

[And] Go play for a while. (where the article and noun are the object of the preposition, "for.")

The Quick and Dirty Tip is that “awhile” as one word and “a while” as two words both describe a vague length of time, but you use the one-word version when you need an adverb and the two-word version when you need a noun.

To tell the difference, you can test your sentence with other nouns and adverbs. If you can replace “a while” with another article and noun such as “an hour” or “a year,” you know you want the two-word version. If you can replace “awhile” with another adverb such as “quietly,” “longer,” or “briefly,” you know you want the one-word version.

NOTE: As is so often the case, English usage isn’t simple. Most sources I checked (The Chicago Manual of Style, Garner's Modern English Usage, and the AP Stylebook) recommend the guidelines I just gave you, but I found one dissenter: an American Heritage Dictionary usage note says that the noun phrase “a while” can be used adverbially, so that both “Go play awhile” and “Go play a while” are correct. Also, Merriam-Webster says people often break the rules, and the use of “awhile” as the object of a preposition (as in “Go play for awhile”) is increasing. 

I’m sticking with my advice, but I thought you should know that although it is the most common advice and the safest choice, it’s not universal.

Familect

Finally, I have a familect from Melissa:

Hey, Mignon, I have a family-ism for you: I was with my niece, who was about five years old or so at the time, and it was a hot summer day, and the sun was just about to go down, and she looks at me and she says, 'We better go inside before the crittadors get us.' And I kind of thought about it, and I realized she combined the word 'critters' with 'predators,' which made so much sense because the mosquitoes were literally about to come out and consume us.

Thanks, Melissa. You're right. That makes good sense — those critter predators.

And before we finish, thanks to all our Grammarpaloozian supporters. Last week, they learned how telemark skiing got its name and which word dominates the dictionary, AND they got a Winter Olympics themed mini-crossword puzzle. The best place to sign up so you get fun extras too this week is Patreon.com/grammargirl. 

Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Maram Elnagheeb; Nat Hoopes; Morgan Christianson; Dan Feierabend; Holly Hutchings; and Rebekah Sebastain, who prefers the enneagram to the zodiac, and is an enneagram 4.

And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. 

That's all. Thanks for listening.Â