Is it 'further' or 'farther'?

For most sets of commonly confused words a nice and simple ‘this word means X and that other word means Y’ sentence can be crafted. But here are certain exceptions; some pairs of words appear to have a simple distinction, but when inspected closer will soon have you questioning whether we can ever truly say that a word means anything. You know, like further and farther.

They've been mixed up for what seems forever.

The case of further and farther has been common enough over the past hundred-plus years that dozens of usage guides have had a crack at coming up with a simple explanation. The most common quick answer is usually something along the lines of "farther is for physical distance and further is for figurative distance." As is often the case, however, simple rules run into the buzzsaw of actual usage.

Further down the river, the boat carrying Phillips and Pereira powered homewards through the darkness towards a perfect full moon.
— Tom Phillips, The Guardian (London, Eng.), 17 Jun. 2022

Without that last-minute salvation, I would have had to return next summer to get to St. Kilda, which is another (nearly) hundred miles further west.
— Neel Mukherjee, The New York Times 20 May 2018

The Origins of ‘Further’ vs. ‘Farther’

The problem of distinguishing between further and farther is compounded by the fact that each of these words can be an adverb, adjective, or a verb, and has multiple meanings in some of these parts of speech. In certain cases you would do well to use one over the other, in other cases there is a degree of leeway, and in still others it doesn’t much matter which one you use. Welcome to English.

Further is the older of the two, with farther originating from it as a variant in Middle English. For much of their history the words have been used interchangeably. As adverbs, they still are interchangeable when applied to distance (whether spatial, temporal, or metaphorical). Many usage guides will still recommend keeping farther reserved for literal distance and further for figurative, but there is enough recently published evidence of the figurative use of farther that it is difficult to say it is a mistake.

Go farther back in history and you find composers being equally subversive in clever, coded ways.
— Richard Morrison, The Times (London, Eng.), 22 Sept. 2017

As Adverbs

As adverbs, further and farther are not confined to distance, and this leads to one clearer distinction between the words. Further has the meaning of “moreover” or “additionally,” one that is not shared by farther. Farther does not work very well as a sentence adverb, and so it would sound rather awkward to begin a sentence with “Farther, I’d like to address the issue of why these words are so confusing.”

As Adjectives

When using these words as adjectives there are similar degrees of overlap and distinction. While both words are defined as carrying the meaning of “additional,” this role has now been almost entirely taken over by further.

He became aware that Mr. Jackson was clearing his throat preparatory to farther revelations.
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, 1920

”Well,” he began, without any further greeting….
— Katherine Anne Porter, Ladies’ Home Journal, Aug. 1971

It is easy enough to find writers, such as Edith Wharton, who in the past century have used farther to mean “additional," but this use has decreased enough in recent decades that you are advised to choose further. However, when using an adjective to refer to distance, either literal or figurative, the words are once again interchangeable (although further is increasing in frequency).

…a show of artists simply at work, whether making expressionistic paintings, idiosyncratic functional constructions, casting the further shores of socially activist conceptualism….
— Jerry Saltz, New York, 20 Mar. 2017

His business specializes in shellfish caught off the Mediterranean coast, including oysters from the Camargue and mussels from Bouzigues in southern France, though fruits de mer from farther shores, like Brittany lobsters, can also be found.
— Rathe Tep, The New York Times, 22 Jul. 2018

As Verbs

Finally providing use with a degree of clarity, further is the undisputed winner in the verb bloodfest (e.g., you attempt to further your career by pretending to work harder than you actually do). This is not to say that farther hasn’t also been used as a verb, but it is now rare enough that you can sneer at anyone who uses it in this fashion (just kidding; please do not sneer at people for their linguistic nonconformity).

We understand that people who are looking for usage guidance have a marked preference for single-sentence answers. In some cases it is not possible to distill hundreds of years of shifting usage into a few dozen words. If you come across a situation which the paragraphs above do not address, there is always the standard dodge given by usage guides when no clear answer is possible: let your ear guide you.

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