''yonder'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260727004347-00-⌔

yonder - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adverb

yonder (not comparable)

• (archaic or dialectal outside of Cumbria, Southern US) At or in a distant but indicated place.
  • ✤ Whose doublewide is that over yonder?
  • ✤ See who yonder is.¹
  • ✤ “A fine man, that Dunwody, yonder,” commented the young captain, as they parted, and as he turned to his prisoner. “We’ll see him on in Washington some day. He is strengthening his forces now against Mr. Benton out there.”²
• (archaic or dialect) Synonym of thither: to a distant but indicated place.
  • ✤ They headed on over yonder.
  • ✤ As for me and the childe, we wyl go yonder.³

Adjective

yonder (comparative more yonder, superlative most yonder)

• (archaic or dialect) The farther, the more distant of two choices.
  • ✤ “You have all necessary proofs in your possession, though you may not be aware of their existence,” replied Arden; “will you allow me to open yonder box?”⁴

Noun

yonder (plural yonders)

• (literary) The vast distance, particularly the sky or trackless forest.
  • ✤ She set off into the blue yonder.
  • ✤ Off we go in to the wild blue yonder,
    Climbing high into the sun…⁵

Etymology

From Middle English yonder, yondre, ȝondre, ȝendre, from Old English ġeonre (“thither; yonder”, adverb), equivalent to yond (from ġeond, from Proto-Germanic ﹡jainaz) + -er, as in hither, thither.
Cognate with Scots ȝondir (“yonder”), Saterland Frisian tjunder (“over there, yonder”), Dutch ginder (“over there; yonder”), Middle Low German ginder, gender (“over there”), German jenseits (“on the other side, beyond”),⁶ Gothic 𐌾𐌰𐌹𐌽𐌳𐍂𐌴 (jaindrē, “thither”).⁷

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈjɒndə(ɹ)/
• (US) IPA: /ˈjɑndəɹ/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• Audio (Australian): 🔊
• (regional Southern US, obsolete) IPA: /ˈjændə(ɹ)/⁸⁹
• (New England, obsolete) IPA: /ˈjɛndə/¹⁰⁹
• Rhymes: -ɒndə(ɹ)

Printed 2026-07-27.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], line 149: ↩

2. 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC: ↩

3. 1535, Bible (Coverdale), Genesis, 22: ↩

4. 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 163: ↩

5. 1939, Robert MacArthur Crawford, Army Air Corps:: ↩

6. https://www.dwds.de/wb/dwb/jener ↩

7. “yonder, adv., adj., pron., * & * n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921. ↩

8. Stanley, Oma (1937), “I. Vowel Sounds in Stressed Syllables”, in The Speech of East Texas (American Speech: Reprints and Monographs; 2), New York: Columbia University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, § 7, page 18. ↩

9. Kurath, Hans; McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1961), The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States: based upon the collections of the linguistic atlas of the Eastern United States ‎${}^{[1]}$, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, § 5.4, page 143: The/ɑ ~ ɒ/of lot is the usual vowel in yonder, but a variety of other vowels have some currency, mostly in folk speech: in the North and the North Midland, the/ʌ/of sun and the/ɛ/of ten; in parts of the South and the South Midland, the/æ/of man. See Map 82. It is not clear without further investigation whether South Carolina and Georgia have/ə/beside/ɑ/in yonder. ↩ ↩²

10. Bingham, Caleb (1808), “Improprieties in Pronunciation, common among the people of New-England”, in *The Child’s Companion; Being a Conciſe Spelling-book […] * ‎${}^{[2]}$, 12th edition, Boston: Manning & Loring, →OCLC, page 77. ↩