The Collaborative International Dictionary
Whither \Whith"er\, adv. [OE. whider. AS. hwider; akin to E. where, who; cf. Goth. hvadr[=e] whither. See Who, and cf. Hither, Thither.]
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To what place; -- used interrogatively; as, whither goest thou? ``Whider may I flee?''
--Chaucer.Sir Valentine, whither away so fast?
--Shak. -
To what or which place; -- used relatively.
That no man should know . . . whither that he went.
--Chaucer.We came unto the land whither thou sentest us.
--Num. xiii. 27. -
To what point, degree, end, conclusion, or design; whereunto; whereto; -- used in a sense not physical.
Nor have I . . . whither to appeal.
--Milton.Any whither, to any place; anywhere. [Obs.] ``Any whither, in hope of life eternal.''
--Jer. Taylor.No whither, to no place; nowhere. [Obs.]
--2 Kings v. 25.Syn: Where.
Usage: Whither, Where. Whither properly implies motion to place, and where rest in a place. Whither is now, however, to a great extent, obsolete, except in poetry, or in compositions of a grave and serious character and in language where precision is required. Where has taken its place, as in the question, ``Where are you going?''
Usage examples of "no whither".
The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency.