Citations:flother

English citations of flother

noun: "nonsensical talk", an obsolete usage particular to the area of Lancashire

• 1866, James Taylor Staton, "Rays fro th' loominary: a selection of comic Lancashire tales adapted for public reading or reciting".

  Defendant: Waw, yoar worship, that its aw flummery un flother un no mooar truth in it than there is in a three legged stool.

"nonsensical talk"? or rather ~"froth"? or state of agitation or disarray?

• 1809, Thomas Donaldson, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect / Both Humourous and Entertaining:

  Ye windy, rhymin', bleth'rin hash, Ye'll tak in woo' to card to trash; [...] Ye rhyme 'bout thrums an' wabs thegither, A hotchy potchy in a flother.

state of agitation or disarray?

• 2021, Julia Goodman, You brand: A Manual for Confidence:

  So if you lose your way, notes like these are worse than useless, and are likely [to] set you off into a flother of paper shuffling and awkwardness.

a different sense; the writer was from southern England (something in the vein of 'froth'? cf. the snowy sense discussed on Talk:flother. or perhaps the 'state of agitation/disarray' sense?)

• 1909, Alice Dudeney ("Mrs. Henry Dudeney"), Rachel Lorian:

  She sat by the fire; the ash—of the note book to Patrick—lay in a flother on the hot bricks.