fother

Definitions

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  • noun A wagon-load; a cart-load.
  • noun A load; weight; burden; mass.
  • noun An old unit of weight for lead, lime, and some other substances; a two-horse cart-load. A fother of lead varies from 19 1/2 to 22 1/2 hundredweight, each hundredweight being usually 120 pounds avoirdupois. At Néwcastle in England a fother is a third of a chaldron; and in American lead-mines the word is sometimes used for a short ton.
  • null To place a sail or tarpaulin over, as a leak in a ship's hull, for the purpose of keeping the water out. In fothering a leak, rope-yarns, oakum, etc., are thickly stitched on the sail or tarpaulin.

Examples

  • On their fifth day, when the ship was riding so low she seemed sure to founder, Cochrane ordered another fother made, but this he ordered big enough to straddle half the starboard hull.

    Sharpe's Devil

  • In the same way, it is possible to become an expert on the apparatus of the old-time naval world — backstays and top-gallants, twenty-four pounders and hardtack — without having the faintest idea how to fire a gun, reef a sail, or fother a ship's bottom.

    In Which We Serve

  • Arthur went about, and his knights by his side; nought they found alive upon earth but the great fire, and bones innumerable; by estimation it seemed to them thirty fother.

    Roman de Brut. English

  • To fother a sail was to make something like a vast hairy doormat out of it, by threading innumerable lengths of half-unravelled line through it.

    Mr. Midshipman Easy

  • He had a strong feeling of the worthlessness of man's life in comparison with the work he has to do, even if that work be only the spreading of a fother of dung.

    Alec Forbes of Howglen

Note

Different senses of the word 'fother' may be related to German 'fuder' "a cartload" and 'futtern' "to cover, to line".