different between litter vs lither

English

Etymology

From French litière, from lit (“bed”), from Latin lectus; confer Ancient Greek ??????? (léktron). Had the sense ‘bed’ in very early English, but then came to mean ‘portable couch’, ‘bedding’, ‘strewn rushes (for animals)’, etc.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?l?t?(?)/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?l?t?/, [?l???]
• Rhymes: -?t?(r)
• Homophone: lidder (US)

Noun

litter (countable and uncountable, plural litters)

1. (countable) A platform mounted on two shafts, or a more elaborate construction, designed to be carried by two (or more) people to transport one (in luxury models sometimes more) third person(s) or (occasionally in the elaborate version) a cargo, such as a religious idol.
2. (collective, countable) The offspring of a mammal born in one birth.
3. (uncountable) Material used as bedding for animals.

4. (uncountable) Collectively, items discarded on the ground.
   • 1730, Jonathan Swift, s:The Lady's Dressing Room

     Strephon [...] / Stole in, and took a strict survey / Of all the litter as it lay.
5. (uncountable) Absorbent material used in an animal's litter tray

6. (uncountable) Layer of fallen leaves and similar organic matter in a forest floor.
7. A covering of straw for plants.

Synonyms

• (platform designed to carry a person or a load): palanquin, sedan chair, stretcher, cacolet
• (items discarded on the ground): waste, rubbish, garbage (US), trash (US), junk

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

litter (third-person singular simple present litters, present participle littering, simple past and past participle littered)

1. (intransitive) To drop or throw trash without properly disposing of it (as discarding in public areas rather than trash receptacles).

2. (transitive) To scatter carelessly about.
3. (transitive) To strew (a place) with scattered articles.
4. (transitive) To give birth to, used of animals.
5. (intransitive) To produce a litter of young.
6. (transitive) To supply (cattle etc.) with litter; to cover with litter, as the floor of a stall.
   • 1693, John Hacket, Scrinia reserata: a Memorial offered to the great Deservings of John Williams

     Tell them how they litter their jades.

   • For his ease, well litter'd was the floor.

7. (intransitive) To be supplied with litter as bedding; to sleep or make one's bed in litter.
   • 1634, William Habington, Castara

     The inn where he and his horse litter'd.

Derived terms

• litterer

Translations

Anagrams

• retilt, tilter, titler

Norman

Etymology

From Old French luitier, loitier, luiter (compare French lutter), from Vulgar Latin luct?re, from Latin luctor, luct?r? (“struggle, wrestle, fight”).

Verb

litter

1. (Jersey) to wrestle

Derived terms

• litteux (“wrestler”)

English

Etymology 1

See lithe.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?la?ð?(?)/

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 l?þre (“bad, wicked, base, mean, corrupt, wretched”), from Proto-Germanic *l?þrijaz (“neglected, dissolute, useless, bad”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lew- (“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”).

Alternative forms

• lidder

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?li?ð?(?)/

Adjective

lither (comparative more lither, superlative most lither)

1. (Can we clean up⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) Bad; wicked; false; worthless; slothful; lazy.
   • c. 1515–1516, published 1568, John Skelton, Again?t venemous tongues enpoy?oned with ?claunder and fal?e detractions &c.:

     For though ?ome be lidder, and li?t for to rayle,
     Yet to lie upon me they cannot prevayle.

   • 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, 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

• Hirtle, Hitler