What does whither mean?
Whither means “to what place?” It’s the old word for “where to,” and today it mostly turns up in one particular kind of headline.
The meaning
Whither asks about direction or destination, where where asks about position. It has two main uses:
- To what place. “Whither are you bound?” means “Where are you going?” This is the original sense, and it sounds old-fashioned now.
- What will become of. “Whither the high street?” asks where something is heading: its future. This is the sense that survives, mostly in essays and headlines.
It can also join two parts of a sentence, meaning “to the place where”: “They went whither the road led.”
Where it comes from
Whither comes from Old English hwider, built on the same question root as who, what and where. It has two siblings that follow the same pattern: hither (to here) and thither (to there).
Its best-known appearance is in the Book of Ruth, in the King James Bible: “whither thou goest, I will go.” The line is still read at weddings, which is why many people know the word without ever using it.
How to say it
For most speakers in Britain, Australia and much of the US, whither sounds exactly like wither: WITH-er, with the “th” of this. Speakers who keep a breathy “hw” sound, common in Scotland, Ireland and parts of the American South, say HWITH-er, and so tell the two words apart.
Whither vs wither
Because they usually sound the same, the two get mixed up all the time:
- Whither (with an h) is about direction: to what place, or what future. “Whither democracy?”
- Wither (no h) is a verb meaning to dry up, shrivel or fade. “The plants withered in the heat.” “A withering look.”
A way to remember it: whither asks a question, so it keeps the wh of question words like where, when and what. A headline asking “Wither the economy?” is telling the economy to shrivel up.
And it isn’t whether, which introduces a choice: “whether or not.”
The word family
English once had a full set of direction words, and a few still survive in phrases:
- Hither, thither, whither: to here, to there, to where. “Running hither and thither.”
- Hence, thence, whence: from here, from there, from where. “Whence did you come?”
Why our game is called Whither
Whither is a daily trivia game played on a board of lettered hexes. You start at the top, answer questions whose answers begin with each hex’s letter, and build a chain down to the bottom edge. Every board asks the question in the name: which way down?