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The paragraph lies below in italic, it's an excerpt from a novella by Stephen King.

And he looked at her reproachfully. It would be a little while yet before she picked up the book and threw it at him, but that was what really tore it. That reproachful look. She could no longer stand it.

I have trouble with understanding the bold sentence. I assume meaning would be something like "as soon as he glanced to her, she flung the book at him". But usage of three conjunctions (while, yet, before) in a row confused me. I think "while" in this sentence is used as main conjunction and "yet before" is a synonym for "just before", indicating that there is only a small interval between two incidents. Am I right, or did I just digress too much from actual meaning? Is "yet before" a legitimate use in English?

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    In contexts like this, the word yet is optional - it wouldn't really make any difference if it wasn't present, so arguably it doesn't "mean" anything there anyway. I still have this job to finish, so it'll be a while [yet] before I can leave the office. What exactly does yet mean there? I'd say something like from now or after now. In your context, It would be a little while after that point in time before [something else would happen].
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 18:00
  • Of course, there are plenty of other contexts where "yet before" could reasonably occur. Even as the first two words in a sentence: She pushes free of him, dresses, and prepares to leave. Yet before she closes the front door behind her, she sets Vinny's place at the breakfast table (talking about Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People, 1969). In that context, yet = but.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 19:50

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Yet before is not a phrase.

The sentence parses as It would be [a little while yet] [before she ... threw it at him].

Yet here is an adverb, in the sense "From this (or some stated or implied) time onwards, esp. for a specified length of time; henceforth (or thenceforth)" (Oxford English Dictionary, sense II.9.b)

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  • Yeah, I saw my mistake. I mistook "while" as conjunction where it's used as noun. It seems more clear with that parsing. Thanks a lot.
    – Atypical Dep
    Commented Aug 6, 2023 at 18:24
  • I can see how it could be misleading - I hadn't thought of while as a conjunction.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Aug 7, 2023 at 17:11

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