February 20, 1998

further/farther

I would love to learn the difference, if any, between "further" and "farther." Can you help?

No. Why can't people ask easy questions?

The word further and farther are variants. The earlier form, going back to Old English, was further, in origin a comparitive of the ancestor of Modern English forth. The form farther, first recorded in the early fourteenth century, is a variant of further influenced by far. There are other forms that need not concern us.

For quite some time, further and farther were used more or less interchangeably. In more recent use, further has been more frequent in most uses. Certain constructions can now only use further: the adjectival senses 'additional' ("No further bulletins came in") and 'more extended' ("No further comment") and the use as a sentence adverb ("Further, you hurt my feelings"). Many other senses--for example, 'at or to a greater extent or degree' ("he couldn't complain further")--can use either further or farther, but further is substantially more common.

The one semantic area where farther is still going strong is in literal or metaphorical references to physical distance. Thus, "eight miles farther down the road"; "the farther side of the hill"; or "he saw farther into the future." However, further is still common in these senses, particularly in British English.

Many usage books recommend (or state dogmatically) that farther be used literally for physical distance, and further be used in all other cases (including non-literal references to distance). This is in accordance with current usage in the United States, but it is not an absolute; many people use further even for distance-related senses. In England, further is even more common, in all senses.

If you follow your ear, you'll probably end up using further most of the time anyway. If you do want to follow a rule, you should use farther in adverbial and adjectival uses where distance is literally involved, and further for everything else.