t'other - From Ulster to America
Source: From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English
Author: Michael Montgomery
Comments: From Ulster to America recounts the lasting impact eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster have made on the development of the English language of the United States. The book documents over 500 vocabulary items contributed to American English by these ‘Scotch-Irish’ settlers. Each ‘shared’ term with its meaning is authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. This searchable online version of his book takes its text from the dictionary part of the second edition published by the Ullans Press in 2017.
t’other, tither, tother pron, adj The other (often used with the definite article: the t’other). [the tother represents a false division of Middle English thet other < Old English þæt oþer ‘the other’; oed tother pron/adj now Scottish, northern English; snd t’ither pron 2 ‘the other or second of two, frequently in opposition to tane’, i.e. the ane ‘the one’]
Ulst.:
1813 Porter Poetical Attempts Then twa-three steps before he falls, / He runs ram-stam, / Then down he goes, and out he bawls / The tither damn.
1861 Hume Rabbin’s Ollminick 10 Mind I tell ye, it’s no lie to say that one half o’ the worl’ disn’t know how the tother half lives.
1903 Gwynn Highways and Byways 11 Maybe A vote for the one, maybe A vote for the tither.
1935 Megaw Carragloon 101 It’s not the newspaper he’s at, but books, without a picture in them from one end till the tother.
1953 Traynor Donegal Glossary 310 tother = a contraction of ‘that one’ or ‘that other’.
2014 Fenton Hamely Tongue 255 = other: ‘He towl me the tither day’; ‘ether the yin or the tither’.
U.S.:
1834 Crockett Narrative 31 I was trying to get as far the t’other way as possible.
1871 Eggleston Hoosier Schoolmaster 15 As I pay the most taxes, t’others jist let me run the thing.
1924 Spring Lydia Whaley 3 There were two brothers in the Burg—one loafered, tother one was in a notion of marryin’.
1967 Hall Coll I remember him just the same as it a-being the tother day.
1976 Ogle and Nixon If Only We always called it this house and ‘tother’ house.
