flother

Uncertain. The English Place-Name Society suggests 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. Dictionaries of dialects record several other (now rare or otherwise unattested) senses, including "froth" and "snowflake".

flother (countable and uncountable, plural flothers)

1. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (obsolete, Lancashire, uncountable) Nonsensical talk.^[1][2]

   Alternative form: vlother

   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:flother.
2. (Cumberland, Northumbria, countable, now obsolete outside placenames) A miry bog.^[3]

   Alternative form: flodder

   They lived in Flother (as Flodder Hall was formerly known).

   • 1883, Archaeologia Aeliana, Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, volume 9, page 65:

     […] flothers […] The Flothers

   • 1883, The Poll Book of the Contested Election for the Southern Division of Northumberland ... December, 1832, page 126:

     Flothers, near Slaley […] f. houses and land, Flothers

   • 1902, Edward Bateson, Allen Banks Hinds, and the Northumberland County History Committee, A History of Northumberland, volume 6, page 363:

     the homesteads and hamlets of Ryal or Ryehill, Pry, Flothers, Peel-flat, Comb-hills, Swangs, Cocklake, Palmstrothers, Black Strothers,

   • 1931, Geological Survey of Great Britain, The Economic Geology of the Fife Coalfields, volume 3, page 55:

     […] by a horse Gin and Pit 13 fms. deep (South of Flothers Wood). West of Pilmuir Wood it was also worked by an Engine Pit 11 fms . deep , but the workings were abandoned owing to heavy water , without a plan having been made.

   • 1967, English Place-Name Society, volume 42, page 83:

     FLODDER BECK (affluent of the Mint in Docker, SD 59 SE), 1857 OS. Probably, like Flodder Hall and Flodder(s) (i, 83, 130, ii, 41, infra), and Brackenber Flodders (ii, 104 infra), from a dial. form of flother, fludder, which may well be from an OE *flōdor 'channel' suggested for the 12th-century Floder (YW iv, 86). Flother 1704, 1710 PR, from OE *flōdor 'channel' as in Flodder Beck (i, 7 supra).

   • 1970, Godfrey Watson, Goodwife Hot, and Others: Northumberland's Past, page 75:

     The Flothers, near Slaley, however, takes its name from a Swamp, that is to say where water flows over, [...]

   • 2007, English Place-Name Society, volume 83, page 14:

     Flot(t)erker 1430, Flotter Carr 1580, 'marsh with or near a water-channel', v. *flōdor, ker, cf. ModE dial flother 'swamp, a boggy place liable to overflow in wet seasons', very common in f.ns. in Northumberland, e.g. Robinson Flothers, Henshaw,