hither vs. thither

Question

hello,Please , could you tell me the difference between 'hither' and thither'?thank you in advance

Khoff · Accepted Answer

I believe "hither" means "towards here" (towards the speaker) and "thither" means "towards there" (away from the speaker). Both are archaic.

Clive · Answer

Hi,

There are two standard expressions I know of, that use these words. Both are rather old-fashioned, but I wouldn't yet describe then as archaic. Examples:

The crowd ran hither and thither in confusion. The crowd ran back and forth, they ran aimlessly.

The beautiful woman gave him a come-hither look. In her look, he could very clearly see that she wanted him to come here, to come in her direction. And he knew that she didn't just want him to wash her dishes.

Best wishes, Clive

JoeTotale · Answer

Yeah, "hither" = "to this place", "thither" means "to that place", and "whither" means "to what place?". There is a whole little set of words that begin in h-/th-/wh- and all follow the same pattern. Cf.

WHere?
Here
THere

Wherefore, therefore, herefore (whencefore, thencefore, hencefore)

Whence, thence, hence

Whither, thither, hither.

In all of them, "wh-" is the interrogative, "th-" means "that place", and "h-" means "this place". Most of them are archaic but many (such as here/there/where) have persisted.

Anonymous · Answer

As has already been said, there's a wh/th/h thing going on. What made me notice it was the correlative system in Esperanto, so I'll call them correlatives HENCE forth (from this place forwards) if I need to.

thing - WHAT - THAT - ------

time - WHEN - THEN - ------

at/in a place - WHERE - THERE - HERE

towards a place - WHITHER - THITHER - HITHER

from a place - WHEN - THENCE - HENCE

As you can see, there are gaps. The words *hat and *hen don't really fit there.

There might be more than I claim to know.

The wh-forms are interrogatives - they ask a question. (They can also act as relative pronouns.)

The th- and h-forms are demonstratives - the 'demonstrate' where/when/etc. something is.

The h-forms are demonstratives that 'denote proximity'. I don't need to tell you the difference between here and there.

I remember my grandad would say "Hither!" to gets us to come over. What can I say, he was old and northern.

Chances are, if you don't recognise a word used up here, it's 'cause it's died out elsewhere. (I say up here, not over here - I assume you're from England.)

It's a bit of a messy thread, but look at this:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=206042

Lloyd

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you for this question

hither vs. thither

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