fur

fur pronunciation

/FUR/

Meaning

In mountain and rural Southern talk, fur is how far often comes out. "How fur is it?" means how far. You also hear a fur piece for a good stretch of road. Some dialect writing uses fur for for too, but fer is the clearer spelling for that preposition. Distance is the sense that marks the accent.

How folks use it

• “That store's too fur to walk in this heat.”
• “How fur down the hollow before we hit the creek?”

Origin and etymology

Old English far with a Southern and Appalachian vowel shift that makes it sound like fur. Arkansas memoirist Wayman Hogue listed "fur for far" and "fer for for" as mountain speech. Writers have used the spelling for more than a century to catch that sound on the page.

Frequently asked questions