elsewhither

English

Etymology

From else +‎ whither (“to which place, to what place”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɛlswɪðə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɛlswɪðɚ/

Adverb

elsewhither (not comparable)

1. (formal) To some other place; in some other direction.

   Synonym: otherwhither; more at somewhere else

   • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “Chapter VIII, The Didactic”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book IV (Horoscope), page 295:

     […] know that ‘impossible,’ where Truth and Mercy and the everlasting Voice of Nature order, has no place in the brave man’s dictionary. That when all men have said “Impossible,” and tumbled noisily elsewhither, and thou alone art left, then first thy time and possibility have come.

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XLIII, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC, page 225:

     With Strickland the sexual appetite took a very small place. It was unimportant. It was irksome. His soul aimed elsewhither.

Related terms

• elsewhence
• elsewhere
• whithersoever

 

References

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “elsewhither”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.