different between wether vs hether

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?w?ð?/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?w?ð?/
• Rhymes: -?ð?(?)
• Homophones: weather, whether (in accents with the wine-whine merger)

Etymology 1

From Middle English wether, wethir, wedyr, from Old English weþer (“a wether, ram”), from Proto-Germanic *weþruz (“wether”), from Proto-Indo-European *wet- (“year”). Cognate with Scots weddir, woddir, wadder (“wether”), Dutch weder, weer (“wether”), German Widder (“wether, ram”), Norwegian Bokmål vær (“ram”), Norwegian Nynorsk vêr (“ram”), Swedish vädur (“wether, ram”), Icelandic veður (“wether, ram”), Latin vitulus (“calf”).

Alternative forms

• wedder (dialectal)

Noun

wether (plural wethers)

1. A castrated buck goat.
2. A castrated ram.
   • c. 1596-97, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV scene i^[1]:

     I am a tainted wether of the flock,

     Meetest for death […]

Derived terms

• bellwether

Translations

Verb

wether (third-person singular simple present wethers, present participle wethering, simple past and past participle wethered)

1. (transitive) To castrate a male sheep or goat.

Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

wether

1. Archaic spelling of weather.
   • (cited after Samuel Roffey Maitland, 1866, p. 8)

Anagrams

• reweth

English

Noun

hether (countable and uncountable, plural hethers)

1. Obsolete spelling of heather

Adverb

hether (not comparable)

1. Obsolete spelling of hither
2. Obsolete spelling of helder