flother

English

Etymology

Uncertain. The English Place-Name Society suggests that the word (at least in the sense "bog") derives from Old English *flōdor (“channel”), related to flōd (“flowing; stream; flood”), and the DSL too speculates that the word (and its synonymous Scots cognate, attested since 1611) might be related to Scots flude, English flood. Alternatively, it might be related to Scots fluther, English flutter. Perhaps also compare floter (“float”). Dialect dictionaries record several other (now rare or otherwise unattested) senses, including "nonsensical talk"^[1]^[2] (which is more often found in the form vlother) and "snowflake".

Noun

flother (countable and uncountable, plural flothers)

(Cumberland, Northumbria, countable, uncommon, now obsolete outside placenames) A miry bog.^[3]
Alternative form: flodder

They lived in Flother (as Flodder Hall was formerly known).
- 1883, Archaeologia Aeliana, Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, volume 9, page 65:
  […] flothers […] The Flothers
- 1883, The Poll Book of the Contested Election for the Southern Division of Northumberland ... December, 1832, page 126:
  Flothers, near Slaley […] f. houses and land, Flothers
- 1902, Edward Bateson, Allen Banks Hinds, and the Northumberland County History Committee, A History of Northumberland, volume 6, page 363:
  […] the homesteads and hamlets […] of Ryal or Ryehill, Pry, Flothers, Peel-flat, Comb-hills, Swangs, Cocklake, Palmstrothers, Black Strothers, […]
- 1931, Geological Survey of Great Britain, The Economic Geology of the Fife Coalfields, volume 3, page 55:
  […] by a horse Gin and Pit 13 fms. deep (South of Flothers Wood). West of Pilmuir Wood it was also worked by an Engine Pit 11 fms . deep , but the workings were abandoned owing to heavy water , without a plan having been made.
- 1967, English Place-Name Society, volume 42, page 83:
  FLODDER BECK (affluent of the Mint in Docker, SD 59 SE), 1857 OS. Probably, like Flodder Hall and Flodder(s) (i, 83, 130, ii, 41, infra), and Brackenber Flodders (ii, 104 infra), from a dial. form of flother, fludder, which may well be from an OE *flōdor 'channel' suggested for the 12th-century Floder (YW iv, 86). […] Flother 1704, 1710 PR, from OE *flōdor 'channel' as in Flodder Beck (i, 7 supra).
- 1970, Godfrey Watson, Goodwife Hot, and Others: Northumberland's Past, page 75:
  The Flothers, near Slaley, however, takes its name from a Swamp, that is to say where water flows over, [...]
- 2007, [Journal of the] English Place-Name Society, volume 83, page 14:
  […] Flot(t)erker 1430, Flotter Carr 1580, [...] 'marsh with or near a water-channel', v. *flōdor, ker, cf. ModE dial flother 'swamp, a boggy place liable to overflow in wet seasons', very common in f.ns. in Northumberland, e.g. Robinson Flothers, Henshaw, […]
(in UK dialects, uncountable, rare) A state of agitation or disarray, a lather.
- 1809, Thomas Donaldson, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect / Both Humourous and Entertaining:
  Ye windy, rhymin', bleth'rin hash, Ye'll tak in woo' to card to trash; [...] Ye rhyme 'bout thrums an' wabs thegither, A hotchy potchy in a flother.
- 1909, Alice Dudeney ("Mrs. Henry Dudeney"), Rachel Lorian:
  She sat by the fire; the ash—of the note book to Patrick—lay in a flother on the hot bricks.
- 2021, Julia Goodman, You brand: A Manual for Confidence:
  So if you lose your way, notes like these are worse than useless, and are likely [to] set you off into a flother of paper shuffling and awkwardness.

References

^ Dialect of South Lancashire, or Tim Bobbin's Tummus and Meary, revised and corrected, with his rhymes, and an enlarged glossary. of words and phrases, chiefly used by the rural population of the manufacturing districts of South Lancashire. Samuel Bamford. John Heywood, Printer, Heywood, 1850.
^ A Glossary of the Dialect of the Hundred of Lonsdale: North and South of the Sands in the County of Lancaster, Together with an Essay On Some Leading Characteristics of the Dialects Spoken in the Six Northern Counties of England (ancient Northumbria). Robert Backhouse Peacock, ed J.C. Atkinson, Philological Society. Asher & Co, London, 1850.
^ A Glossary of the Words and Phrases of Cumberland. William Dickinson. Callander & Dixon, Whitehaven; John Russell Smith, London: 1859. "Flother, N. a miry bog."

[lancashire1-1] Dialect of South Lancashire, or Tim Bobbin's Tummus and Meary, revised and corrected, with his rhymes, and an enlarged glossary. of words and phrases, chiefly used by the rural population of the manufacturing districts of South Lancashire. Samuel Bamford. John Heywood, Printer, Heywood, 1850.

[lancashire2-2] A Glossary of the Dialect of the Hundred of Lonsdale: North and South of the Sands in the County of Lancaster, Together with an Essay On Some Leading Characteristics of the Dialects Spoken in the Six Northern Counties of England (ancient Northumbria). Robert Backhouse Peacock, ed J.C. Atkinson, Philological Society. Asher & Co, London, 1850.

[cumberland-3] A Glossary of the Words and Phrases of Cumberland. William Dickinson. Callander & Dixon, Whitehaven; John Russell Smith, London: 1859. "Flother, N. a miry bog."

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