fother

English

Etymology

From Old Norse fóðr, but see Old English fōdor, from Proto-Germanic *fōdrą (compare Dutch voer (“pasture, fodder”), German Futter (“feed”), Swedish foder), from fōda (“food”), from Proto-Indo-European *pat- 'to feed'. More at food.

Noun

fother (plural fothers)

1. (obsolete) a wagonload; a load of any sort.
2. an old English measure of lead or other metals, usually containing 19.5 hundredweight; a fodder.
   • 1866: Now measured by the old hundred, that is, 108 lbs. the charrus contains nearly 19½ hundreds, that is it corresponds to the fodder, or fother, of modern times. —James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, Volume 1, p. 168.
3. (dialect) Food for animals.
   • 1663, Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, part 1, canto 2

     He ripp'd the womb up of his mother, / Dame Tellus, 'cause he wanted fother, / And provender, wherewith to feed / Himself and his less cruel steed.

Verb

fother (third-person singular simple present fothers, present participle fothering, simple past and past participle fothered)

1. (dialect) To feed animals (with fother).
2. (dated, nautical) To stop a leak with oakum or old rope (often by drawing a sail under the hull).

Anagrams

• therof