Using the word 'whither'

Question

Does the word whither mean to where?

Does that mean you can use it this way:

This is the sea whither we were sailing.

This is the city whither the ship was sailing.

This is the island whither the crew was sailing.

Answer 1

(The short answers to your two questions are yes, it does, and yes, you can.)

The entire sequence of the mostly archaic "adverbs of place" is:

Whither - to where
Hither - to here
Thither - to there
Whence - from where
Hence - from here
Thence - from there

For example, the popular song Do you know where you're going to? might have been Dost thou know whither goest thou? (reversing the last two words to make them fit rhythmically — poetic license) 300 years ago. It sounds very archaic to the native ear, though.

There are a few expressions that survive, such as a come-hither look, meaning a seductive look. Also, hither and yon (or sometimes hither and thither means all about chaotically with no sense of direction). And hence is still pretty common, but with the meaning of something that follows logically from a stated assertion: I was in San Francisco last night, hence you could not have seen me in New York.

This is a nice summary of the words' meanings and usage. Also, here's an Ngram of the frequency of the words from 1800 to the present. You can see from it that hence is currently used much more often than the others. (Interestingly, I find from looking over the books in this that thence is still in very common use in surveyors' descriptions.)

Answer 2

The simple answer is, unless you are writing in the style of an 18th century poet, don't use whither. The word is not used in unmarked modern English.

The meaning of "whither" is "what direction" and yes, it means "to where". So if you are sailing on a sea, from a city and to an island then the first two are wrong. The last one is correct because it is the only one which uses a destination.

Modern Engish would use "to"

This is the island to which the crew was sailing.

or more likely

This is the island the crew was sailing to.

Answer 3

Yes, ‘whither’ roughly means ‘to where’.

Historically, Germanic languages differentiated between direction and location. Some still do (you can see this in modern Swedish for example, ‘hit’ is ‘here’ as a direction, and ‘här’ is ‘here’ as a location), but English has largely lost this distinction. As a result ‘whither’, and the equivalents ‘hither’ (to here) and ‘thither’ (to there) (and their related words ‘whence’, ‘hence’, and ‘thence’, which indicate ‘from where/here/there’) are largely archaic in modern English vernacular.

There are four places you will potentially see these words used in modern English:

• The word ‘hence’ has shifted to become a synonym with ‘therefore’ in a number of dialects, and is still used in that way.
• Historical texts, or texts emulating historical texts, obviously still use these because they are archaic. The shift away from whither/hither/thither/whence/hence/thence is relatively recent (compared to the age of the language as a whole), happening only within the last few centuries. As a result of how recent said shift was, a lot of people associate these words alongside a number of older pronouns (such as thee and thou) with ‘Old English’ (except it’s very much not Old English, it’s Early Modern English they usually end up replicating).
• Poetry will sometimes still use them. This kind of goes alongside the above point, but even when not emulating older styles these words may still find usage in poetry simply because the sound and/or rhythm may fit better.
• A small handful of idioms and fixed phrases still use them as well.

Additionally, on rare occasion, I have seen some people choose to use these words when translating from languages that do make this differentiation in cases where the difference cannot be inferred from context otherwise in English. This type of usage is uncommon to say the least though, so you are not very likely to encounter it.

Answer 4

Whither is a locative adverb.

Note the table at the bottom of the linked wiktionary article showing the relationships between where, whither and whence on the first line. There are similar relationships between here, hither and hence, and there, thither and thence. This is one of the few instances of English being surprisingly logical.

"Where" indicates a place. "Whither" means "to that place", and "whence" means "from that place." The usage of "whither" generally indicates a question, just as "where" and "whence" do when the place is unknown.

Your examples, for instance, "This is the sea whither we were sailing" are not really in accord with correct usage. A more likely use of whither would be something like, "We are here in this sea. How did we get hither? And now whither?" Whither does mean "to where" but not as literally as you have used it in your examples.

Answer 5

Welcome to ELL, sovomon!

"Whither" does indeed mean "to where". Unfortunately it is now considered archaic.

Shakespeare used many similar words ('locative adverbs'):

hence (from here), thence (from there), whence (from where);
hither (to here), thither (to there) and whither (to where).

But although we encounter these words in literature and poetry of earlier times, we no longer use them, unless we are being deliberately archaic.

Whom is the only survivor, but its days are numbered!