Farther

How to spell farther

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce farther

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does farther mean?

1. adverbTo or at a greater physical distance.

Farther in a sentence

• The petrol station is farther down the motorway than the map suggested.

• She could throw the ball farther than anyone else on the team.

Where does farther come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grew out of the Old English adjective 'feor', meaning 'distant' or 'a long way off', the ancestor of modern 'far'. Curiously, 'farther' did not start life as a tidy comparative of 'far'; it arose in Middle English as a variant of 'further', which came from the separate Old English word 'furthor' meaning 'more forward' or 'to a greater degree'. Over time English writers reshaped 'further' under the influence of 'far', producing the spelling 'farther' that visibly contains its base word. By the later medieval period the two forms drifted toward a useful division of labour, with 'farther' tending to mark physical distance and 'further' tending to mark degree or addition. The lingering overlap is exactly why the two are still confused, and remembering that 'farther' literally hides 'far' inside it is the surest way to fix its spelling.

How the word is built

• far (Old English feor: distant)
• -ther (comparative ending borrowed from 'further')