English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈlaɪðə(r)/

Adjective

lither

1. comparative form of lithe: more lithe
   • 1900 — Grant Allen and Arthur Conan Doyle, Hilda Wade, ch VIII

     Doolittle and myself waited. Colebrook kept on cautiously, squirming his long body in sinuous waves like a lizard's through the grass, and was soon lost to us. No snake could have been lither.

Etymology 2

From Middle English lither, lyther, luther, lithere, lidder, from Old English lȳþre ‎(“bad, wicked, base, mean, corrupt, wretched”), from Proto-Germanic *lūþrijaz ‎(“neglected, dissolute, useless, bad”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)leu- ‎(“slack, limp”). Related to Old English loþrung ‎(“delusion, rubbish, nonsense”), Old English loddere ‎(“beggar”), Dutch lodder ‎(“a wanton”), Dutch loddering ‎(“drowsy, trifling, wanton”), German lotterig ‎(“slovenly”), German lüderlich ‎(“slovenly”), German liederlich ‎(“dissolute”). See litherly.

Alternative forms

• lidder

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈliːðə(r)/

Adjective

lither ‎(comparative more lither, superlative most lither)

1. Bad; wicked; false; worthless; slothful; lazy.
   • 1592: William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1

     Anon, from thy insulting tyranny,

     Coupled in bonds of perpetuity,

     Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky,

     In thy despite shall ’scape mortality.

   • 1653, Thomas Urquhart and Peter Antony Motteux (translators), François Rabelais (author), Gargantua (1534), chapter XL

     After the same manner a monk--I mean those lither, idle, lazy monks--doth not labour and work, as do the peasant and artificer; doth not ward and defend the country, as doth the man of war; cureth not the sick and diseased, as the physician doth; doth neither preach nor teach, as do the evangelical doctors and schoolmasters; doth not import commodities and things necessary for the commonwealth, as the merchant doth.

   • 1850, H. I. (translator), Reverand Thomas Harding, A.M. (editor), The Decades of Henry Bullinger, Minister of the Church of Zurich., Third Decade, The Parker Society, Great Britain, page 32

     Secondarily, let him which laboreth in his vocation be prompt and active; let him be watchful and able to abide labour; he must be no lither-back¹, unapt, or slothful fellow. Whatever he doth, that let him do with faith² and diligence.

   • 1920, Charles Whibley, Literary Portraits, Ayer Publishing, ISBN 0836909887, page 63

     Thus he sketched an education which might have befitted a great king, without a word of ribaldry or scorn, and in such a spirit as proves that he gravely condemned the lazy, lither system of the monasteries.

Derived terms

• lidderon
• litherlurden
• litherly
• litherness
• litherous

References

• lither in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Anagrams

• Hitler