Word.ws English Dictionary

flother

flother noun: a miry bog.

Noun

flother (countable and uncountable, plural flothers)

  1. (Northumbria, countable, uncommon, Cumberland, now obsolete outside placenames) A miry bog.
    • They lived in Flother (as Flodder Hall was formerly known).
    • […] flothers […] The Flothers1883, Archaeologia Aeliana, Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, volume 9, page 65
  2. (rare, uncountable) A state of agitation or disarray, a lather.
    • 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.1809, Thomas Donaldson, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect / Both Humourous and Entertaining
    • She sat by the fire; the ash—of the note book to Patrick—lay in a flother on the hot bricks.1909, Alice Dudeney ("Mrs. Henry Dudeney"), Rachel Lorian

Examples of flother in a sentence

  • Flothers, near Slaley […] f. houses and land, Flothers1883, The Poll Book of the Contested Election for the Southern Division of Northumberland ... December, 1832, page 126:
  • […] the homesteads and hamlets […] of Ryal or Ryehill, Pry, Flothers, Peel-flat, Comb-hills, Swangs, Cocklake, Palmstrothers, Black Strothers, […]1902, Edward Bateson, Allen Banks Hinds, and the Northumberland County History Committee, A History of Northumberland, volume 6, page 363
  • […] by a horse Gin and Pit 13 fms. deep (South of Flothers Wood).1931, Geological Survey of Great Britain, The Economic Geology of the Fife Coalfields, volume 3, page 55:
  • The Flothers, near Slaley, however, takes its name from a Swamp, that is to say where water flows over, [...]1970, Godfrey Watson, Goodwife Hot, and Others: Northumberland's Past, page 75:

Forms of flother

pluralflothers

Origin of flother

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".

Questions about flother

What does flother mean?
Flother means a miry bog.
How do you use flother in a sentence?
Flothers, near Slaley […] f. houses and land, Flothers
What part of speech is flother?
Flother is a noun.
What is the plural of flother?
The plural of flother is flothers.

Words near flother in the dictionary

  1. flotel
  2. flotels
  3. floterial
  4. floterials
  5. flotes
  6. flother
  7. flothers
  8. flotilin
  9. flotilla
  10. flotillas
  11. flotillin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flother (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “flother.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flother. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.