Whither, Hither, Thither in English, Greek and Latin

I’ve been studying Latin more in depth this summer and have come once again to those adverbs and pronouns of place. I thought it would be useful to (some) other people and for my own purposes to compare the main ones across the three languages. So if you are bored by the kind of stuff you will likely never use in conversation…find another article.

The two words above are interrogative, meaning they start a question. The first one is whither associated with ‘where.’ Whither means “to where” and although today it is acceptable to say “where are you going?”, a way to express yourself more precisely would be say “whither are you going?”. The word ‘whither’ implies you are moving to a new location. In Latin this word is quo (among others), and in Greek ποΐ. Whither has a companion, named whence. Whence means “from where”. So, if I wanted to know where you came from, I could ask, “whence do you come?”. In Latin the word is unde, and in Greek πόθεν.

There are words that answer the question specifically as well. The word ‘here‘ has associated motion words named hither and hence. Hither means “to here”, and hence means “from here”. Hither in Latin is hūc, hence is hinc. In Greek it is τυΐδε and hence is ένθένδε.

The word there also has association motion words, thither and thence. Thither means “to there”, and thence means “from there.” Thither in Latin is eō or istūc and thence is istinc or inde. In Greek thither is ενθάδε and thence is ένθεν.

So now that you’ve read that, we can summarize it in a chart…

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