whithersoever en · ADV
Pronunciation
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Etymology
Inherited from Middle English whidersoevere. By surface analysis, whither + so + -ever.
Meanings
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(archaic, not-comparable) To what place soever; wherever.
[…] whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot.
1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXV, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 270:And a certaine Scribe came, and ſaid vnto him, Maſter, I will follow thee whitherſoeuer thou goeſt.
1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 8:19, column 1:[T]he flaming pillar slowly twisted and thundered off whithersoever it passes to in the bowels of the great earth, leaving Ayesha standing where it had been.
1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:JONES was commanded to leave the Houſe immediately, and told, that his Clothes and every thing elſe ſhould be ſent to him whitherſoever he ſhould order them.
1749, Henry Fielding, “XII. Containing Love Letters, &c.”, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume II, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VI, page 305:Whithersoever she had fared, she had seen nothing but youths fatuously prostrate to her—not one upright figure which she could respect. There were the middle-aged men, the old men, who did not bow down to her; but from middle-age, as from eld, she had a sanguine aversion.
1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter II, in Zuleika Dobson:Whithersoever you choose; but by what means of conveyance[?]
1859, George Augustus Sala, “Seven o’Clock a.m.—A Parliamentary Train”, in Twice Round the Clock; or The Hours of the Day and Night in London. […], London: Houlston and Wright, […], →OCLC, page 58:1926, H.P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales, 8, No.3, 373-80. But again I thought of the emptiness and horror of reality, and boldly prepared to follow whithersoever I might be led.
Synonyms
Translations (4)
de wohin auch immer (to what place soever) · la quōquō (to what place soever) · bg където и да е (to what place soever) · la quōvīs (to what place soever)