Ok, so I’ve done a preliminary board search on this (which is undoubtedly going to come back and bite me, because any time someone makes a statement like that, three posts down someone comes up with 5 previous threads), so here goes:
What is the difference between further and farther?
www.dictionary.com and www.m-w.com list them both as inflected forms of “far,” each having the same meaning. So why do we have two versions? Is this some long-standing difference which no one really has an answer for like Gray vs. Grey? or is there a real differentiation in usage?
And if not, why even have two versions of the same word? I mean, come on… they don’t even count as real synonyms!
My dictionary says that traditional grammarians like to argue that farther should be used only when it comes to physical distance, while further is used to refer to degree, quantity or time.
My dictionary also says that this distinction has generally been ignored since the time of Shakespeare.
It appears that originally, further was not the comparative of far but of the adjective fore or the adverb forth. The comparative of far was farrer. Somewhere along the way the comparative farrer, the adverb forth and the adjective fore became more rare and further was linked with far. Farther is simply a variation of further, probably influenced by the association with far.
The distinciton that Snooooopy mentions is the one I was taught in school, but the rule is arbitrary and of relatively recent origin. I think it’s acceptable to use further in either sense. However, using farther when distance isn’t involved sounds funny to me.
How can this post continue without a quote from the Bible of Writing… Strunk & White’s THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
"Farther, Further. The two words are commonly interchanged, butthere is a distiction worth observing: farther serves best as a distance word, further as a time or quantity word. You chase a ball farther than the other fellow; you pursue a subject further.
“Farther refers to physical distance (He walked farther into the woods.) Further refers to an extension of time or degree (She will look further into the mystery.)”