contraction, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   heather or heath countable, dialectal, obsolete, uncountable

   "they lay upon the ground covered with skins, as the Redshanks do on Hadder"

Contraction

1. 1
   Eye dialect spelling of had to. alt-of, contraction, pronunciation-spelling

Synonyms

All synonyms

lingbroomcalluna vulgarisflowerheathheath

Example

More examples

"they lay upon the ground covered with skins, as the Redshanks do on Hadder"

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English hader, hather, heddre, from Old English *hǣddre, a variant of hǣþ (“heath; heather”). More at heath, heather.

Etymology 2

Contracted form

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