whither
A place to which someone or something goesA place to which someone or something goes; also, a condition to which someone or something moves.
» From whence comest thou, and whither art thou bound?
Wo kommst du her und wo willst du hin? — Pfirsichbaeumchen
Hybrid · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
6 senses(formal)A place to which someone or something goes; also, a condition to which someone or something moves.
(Scotland, UK, dialectal, especially)A state of rushed action; a haste, a hurry; also, a state of anger or excitement.
(Scotland, UK, dialectal, especially)A forceful blow or hit.
(Scotland, UK, dialectal, especially)An act of shaking (vigorously); a shiver, a tremble; also, a slight bout of discomfort or illness.
(Scotland, UK, dialectal, especially)The sound of something moving quickly; a rush, a whiz.
(Scotland, UK, dialectal, especially)A gust of wind; a bluster.
Examples
6 sentencesFrom whence comest thou, and whither art thou bound?
deWo kommst du her und wo willst du hin? — Pfirsichbaeumchen
Don't let your vocabulary whither.
Then he searched for her in the grotto, whither she had fled, and whence she had been dragged away.
deDann suchte er sie in der Grotte, wohin sie geflohen war und woher man sie verschleppt hatte. — Pfirsichbaeumchen
He wasn't certain in which direction he should go and he'd forgotten whither he was traveling and who he was.
deEr war sich nicht sicher, in welche Richtung er gehen sollte, und er hatte vergessen, wohin er reiste und wer er war. — Pfirsichbaeumchen
Whither shall one flee? Where shall I go and abide?
Origin
From Middle English whider (“to what place?; into or to which; to what place, where; no maFrom Middle English whider (“to what place?; into or to which; to what place, where; no matter where, to wherever”), from Old English hwider, hwæder (“to what place, where”), from Proto-Germanic *hwadrê (“to what place, where”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kʷos (“what; which”), from *kʷ- (the primary interrogative root).
The verb is borrowed from Scots whidder, whither (“(of the wind) to bluster; to move quickly”), a frequentative form of whid (“(of wind) to gust; to move quickly”), of Scandinavian/North Germanic origin, from Old Norse hviða (“gust of wind”).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.