Flother

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A miry bog. Northumbria, countable, uncommon

    "They lived in Flother (as Flodder Hall was formerly known)."

  2. 2
    A state of agitation or disarray, a lather. rare, uncountable

    "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."

Example

More examples

"The word 'Flother' only occurs once in Old English, thus making it a hapax legemenon."

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" (which is more often found in the form vlother) and "snowflake".

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.