'erstwhile' is a correct and usable word in written English.
The word means 'formerly' or 'in the past', and can be used to refer to something that has changed or evolved. For example, you could say: "This former fishing village has taken on an erstwhile name - it's now known as a thriving tourist destination."
Admittedly, those were huge mistakes leading to national headlines, failed students, crushed dreams, outraged parents, lost jobs, class-action lawsuits, out-of-court settlements, and the erstwhile name changes of guilty companies, but, again, those boo-boos do seem to happen only occasionally.
In the 1970s, Steven Aust's research had originally shown that cytochrome c reductase (the erstwhile name for CPR, isolated with a tryptic cleavage of its hydrophobic N terminus) generated DROS in reaction milieu [19], [20].
We use the erstwhile names (Chrysapace, Syscia, Ooceraea, etc).
When erstwhile producers name their musical Disaster --yes, with an exclamation point--they are either asking for it, or they have a show so gooDisaster --yese convinceDisaster --yesnothing but heaping praises.
Even a suddenly chastened erstwhile oracle named Alan Greenspan has weighed in with a partial mea culpa.
A bright 18-year-old named Mick Jagger ordered them directly from Chicago, and it was because he had a couple under his arm that he was approached by an erstwhile schoolmate named Keith Richards.
It was because Mick Jagger had a couple of Chess LPs under his arm that he was approached by an erstwhile schoolmate named Keith Richards Once again, that fame is in a large part due to decisions that at the time were simply efforts to wring a few more dollars out of a marginal style.
The fate of the company mirrors the destiny of the fabled Route 128 in Boston, the boulevard that was once the home of erstwhile marquee names such as Data General, Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) and Wang.
Each of them is assigned a false name — Miss Erstwhile, say, or Elizabeth Charming — for the duration of their stay, as if they were figures in a novel.
Alongside many other delectable tidbits, such as what Plummie eats for lunch and the details of his enviable writing process, Wind settles an age-old question about the erstwhile gent's actual name: "Wodehouse," by the way, is pronounced as if it were spelled "Woodhouse".
Craft isn't exactly a household name unlike erstwhile Governor Sarah Palin, whose name was originally touted for the job but she is a heavy hitter in the GOP.
