Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A commotion; a disturbance.
- n. A state of nervous activity; a fuss.
- n. A cloud of smoke or dust that chokes or smothers.
- v. To make confused; trouble; worry.
- v. To be overly concerned with trifles; fuss.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A tumult; disturbance; confusion; bustle; flutter.
- To make a pother or bustle; make a stir.
- To harass and perplex; bother; puzzle; tease.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Bustle; confusion; tumult; flutter; bother.
- v. To make a bustle or stir; to be fussy.
- v. To harass and perplex; to worry.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an excited state of agitation
- v. make upset or troubled
- v. make a fuss; be agitated
Etymologies
- Origin unknown.
Examples
“The damsel, now-a-days, who marries a lad younger than herself, is laying up a large stock of pother, which is to bother her when she becomes thirty -- for even young ladies, you know, after forty, may become thirty.”
“At the poem's centre is a debate about "exact thinking", and how such thinking translates into action, and whether emotion as opposed to reason is ever a justifiable ground for action, and whether action is ever worth it in the first place - though of course if were to be so, then it must first be based on absolutely exact thinking - and, as any sensible reader will swiftly deduce, this is exactly the sort of over-analytical "pother" (Claude's word) which is most discouraging to a woman who might be inclined to think that you might be inclined to be in love with her.”
“Therefore we have on hand an IBM Selectric for addressing envelopes and writing notes without the pother of computer printers.”
The Huffington Post: Red Room: Fran Moreland Johns: Your Stuff as 'Art'
“There was no reason, really, why we shouldn't have bowled off publicly, but the less pother the better.”
“Each would be giving their own different Lewis Carroll take on the world to the pother and despite not listening, each would be convinced the other was in complete agreement with himself.”
“This has caused quite a pother amidst the right-wing punditocracy as you can well imagine, especially El Gordo.”
Lionel: Obama in Cairo: The Immutable Sapience of the Good Book(s)
“The rare junk is not the information that it happened – something that is in reality one mildly surprising – but the pother its disclosure is creating.”
“If you can give no help, spare drowning me with your pother. —”
“A station or two later an elderly gentleman was getting ready to disembark, and was in something of a pother.”
The Beagle Project on the BBC and cut dead by creationists on a train.
“Once for the chantermale, twoce for the pother and once twoce threece for the waither.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pother’.
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jeffrey.t.whitney's list
sartorial, sabbatarian, sagacious, desiccate, ersatz, insouciant, atavistic, luddite, crwth, obdurate, stentorian, ruminate and 51 more...
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Cloudy
with a chance of mizzle
puff, nebulous, fog, overcast, becloud, bedim, taint, befog, dapple, mottle, sully, pother and 83 more...
rawles Typoing is a made up word. Facetious, however, is not. Jun 19, 2007
slumry Hm. . ."bother" apparently predates "pother" by a century or two, and both predate typwriters. Any what kind of word is "typoing" anyway? Jun 14, 2007
rawles A synonym for bother. Nothing will ever make me believe that this was not the result of someone typoing and then being too proud to admit it. May 23, 2007