Learn English – during, while or whilst (the) rain

descriptive-grammargrammaticalityword-choice

Does the last part of the following sentence sound natural for native speakers?

"Alicia was standing under the tree during rain".

Some users have suggested I need to place the article "the" before the noun rain. Could anyone please explain why? And some answers have suggested that "during" should be replaced with "while" or "whilst", but aren't they synonymous? Why should I prefer "while" to "during"?

Best Answer

The problem with during rain is that during is followed by an indication of a time period. During the winter or during Christmas make perfect sense.

Rain without a definite article generally refers to actual drops of water that are falling. "Rain is falling on my head".

The choice of while over during is because during is followed by a noun, and we don't have a convenient noun available here. The verb to rain allows us to form while it rained. This particular case is not a general rule for all weather-related phenomena. During the storm is perfectly fine; storm is a noun which clearly describes an event.

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