Does anybody know what ‘ther’ is supposed to mean? Is it a device used by the author to avoid having to explain things clearly or is there a known answer to this? My Google-fu is failing me on this one.
It’s how a child explains things. “Ther” is just a nonce word, but it’s the type of conversation a child would have if an adult brought up something logical in his fantasy world.
From context, if you really need an explanation :rolleyes:, it’s a word that indicates a female name is really the name of a male.
To the OP, I’m still waiting to find out what “14 k of g in a f p d” means.
This wonderfully weird article claims that the “ther” is evidence that the original language of Winnie the Pooh is not English, and it was translated from Gallo-Romance or Old French, although the stories themselves are much, much older 
:
http://www.specgram.com/CXLVIII.4/04.buendia.pooh.html
Although I suspect that this comment is for real:
I always just figured it was the masculine equivalent of adding “ette” to the end of a name. Like Bernardette or Charlette. Made up, of course, by Chrstopher Robin in order to spackle the gap between Winnie’s name and gender.
When speaking of differences in gender, “spackle the gap” may not be the best choice of terminology…
Since we’re talking about a British English context, you should be aware that “nonce” means “pedophile” over here…
CalMeacham’s final quote has it: to me as a British reader, the spelling emphasizes that Christopher Robin is over-enunciating the word “the”, as children do.
Not sure what that has to do with this thread, although I’m sure the answer ends in “gry”. 
mittu started that infamous thread, and then disappeared for a while. I was surprised to learn a few days ago that he has become a regular poster again.
Since it seems like the OP’s question has been answered factually by some real life British folks I would also like to know if the OP ever got an answer to 14 k of g in a f p d from his friend.
Fuck, didn’t notice it was mittu posting.
Dude, you have some answers a lot of people are wanting to find out.
Well, one in particular…
I thought it was just an emphasized form of the, with that British way of adding Rs that aren’t really Rs anyway. Like, in one of the E. Nesbit books, she has a girl named Anthea whose nickname is Panther, which she explains makes sense if you say it out loud. Well, it makes sense if you’re British and do that R thing–to an American kid it’s total nonsense.
“We called him Tortoise because he taught us,” said the Mock Turtle angrily: “really you are very dull!”
I’m going on record to suggest that the last we hear of mittu in this thread was the OP. 
That implies that British English does not also use nonce to mean “a word apparently used only ‘for the nonce’, i.e. on one specific occasion or in one specific text or writer’s works”, which of course it does. (Definition from OED and in fact the term nonce-word was coined by James Murray, the first editor, although the word nonce itself, meaning for the particular occasion, for that one time, is much older)
Nonce meaning sexual deviant, specifically a pedophile, is peculiar to British English. The origin is unknown, the earliest cite in OED being 1971 in a manual of prison slang.
While I admire your precision on the extent of its use, I would strongly recommend that you don’t actually use it in conversation with anyone in England.
Surely most English people are as familiar (possibly more familiar) with the “nonsense” meaning than the other meaning. What’s more, one’s an adjective and the other’s a noun. Should be pretty clear from context which meaning is intended.
As far as I know, nonce doesn’t have any relation to nonsense. It means a word coined for a single purpose, based on the definition of nonce meaning “now” or “at present”.
Depends what part of America. Here’s how it works for some people.
Maybe Tigger introduced them first. I can see him saying “Winnie ther Pooh.”