whithersoever

Inherited from Middle English whidersoevere. By surface analysis, whither +‎ so +‎ ever.

• Rhymes: -ɛvə(ɹ)

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whithersoever (not comparable)

1. (archaic) To what place soever; wherever.

   Synonym: anywhither

   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Matthew 8:19, column 1:

     And a certaine Scribe came, and ſaid vnto him, Maſter, I will follow thee whitherſoeuer thou goeſt.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, “XII. Containing Love Letters, &c.”, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume II, London: A Millar, , →OCLC, book VI, page 305:

     JONES was commanded to leave the Houſe immediately, and told, that his Clothes and every thing elſe ſhould be ſent to him whitherſoever he ſhould order them.

   • 1859, George Augustus Sala, “Seven o’Clock a.m.—A Parliamentary Train”, in Twice Round the Clock; or The Hours of the Day and Night in London. , London: Houlston and Wright, , →OCLC, page 58:

     Whithersoever you choose; but by what means of conveyance[?]

   • 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXV, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 270:

     […] whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot.

   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     [T]he flaming pillar slowly twisted and thundered off whithersoever it passes to in the bowels of the great earth, leaving Ayesha standing where it had been.

   • 1926, H.P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales, 8, No.3, 373-80.

     But again I thought of the emptiness and horror of reality, and boldly prepared to follow whithersoever I might be led.