You (my husband) say farther and I say further. Not only that but we are both sure we’re right. How can this be? To the benighted farther brigade it is obvious. Farther is the comparative of far, so, at least in the literal sense of distance, it is the logical form. Such instincts to tidy up language are natural.
Indeed a previous comparative was farrer, very logically. This held sway from the 12th to the 17th century, after which it began to be associated with the sort of speech heard on The Archers. (Originally the comparative of far was fyrr, but that was before the Conquest.) The forms farther, further, which came to supplant farrer, were modelled on the noun further, in the meaning of ‘furtherance’.
So much for history. How should anyone decide now whether to use further or farther? Dickens, for example, or his printer, uses either form before the noun end (of a room).
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