far

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /fɑː/

  • Audio (UK):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /fɑɹ/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)

Adjective

far (comparative farther or further, superlative farthest or furthest or farthermost or furthermost)

1. Distant; remote in space.

   He went to a far land.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Joshua 9:6:

     And they went to Ioshua vnto the campe at Gilgal, and said vnto him, and to the men of Israel, Wee be come from a farre countrey: Now therefore make ye a league with vs.

   • 2009, Graham Huggan, Ian Law, Racism Postcolonialism Europe, page 1:

     Tsiolkas's Europe, as voraciously predatory as his own undead protagonist, is a far cry from the fount of idealistic humanism dreamed up by generations of both pre- and post-Enlightenment politicians and philosophers, a Europe defined by its durable capacity for civility in an otherwise barbarous world.

2. Remote in time.

   the far future

3. Long. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
   • 2011, Peggy Woods, Ramblings from a Soul, page 42:

     I have such a long way to go but yet I have come such a far piece already

4. More remote of two.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIX, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress, and he gave her strips of bass to tie up her nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook.

   See those two mountains? The ogre lives on the far one.

   He moved to the far end of the state. She remained at this end.

5. Extreme, as measured from some central or neutral position.

   They are on the far right on this issue.

   • 2010, William Alexander Patterson, 4th, The City Is served Bartholomew! to the American Prison!, page 118:

     He was withdrawn to such a far degree that it required of Piers and Jude a good deal of occasional conferencing between the two of them, in private.

6. Extreme, as a difference in nature or quality.
   • 1657, Henry Ainsworth, Zachary Coke, The Art of Logick., page 26:

     As sensible maketh a man differ from a stone, in a far difference; for other Species, as Beasts, have the same difference, but reasonable is the nearest, whereby he differeth from a stone, beasts, and all other things.

   • 1979, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations, Military situation in the Far East - Volume 3, page 1737:

     Is there not a far difference between asking it up and urging it, Mr. Secretary?

   • 2010, Deborah Cartmell, Screen Adaptations: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, page 78:

     The pressbook identifies the film as a 'picturization of Jane Austen's widely read novel' and starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier (based on the theatrical adaptation by Helen Jerome), it is a far remove from adaptations that follow.

   • 2014, Henry Sussman, Playful Intelligence: Digitizing Tradition, page 124:

     This may not be at such a far remove from the endlessly recursive textual inventions of Kafka, Beckett, and Bernhard as it may seem.

7. (programming, not comparable) Outside the currently selected segment in a segmented memory architecture.

   far heap; far memory; far pointer

Adverb

far (comparative farther or further, superlative farthest or furthest)

1. To, from or over a great distance in space, time or other extent.

   You have all come far and you will go further.

   He built a time machine and travelled far into the future.

   Over time, his views moved far away from mine.

2. Very much; by a great amount.

   He was far richer than we'd thought.

   The expense far exceeds what I expected.

   I saw a tiny figure far below me.

   • 2012 May 5, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool”, in BBC Sport:

     The Reds were on the back foot early on when a catalogue of defensive errors led to Ramires giving Chelsea the lead. Jay Spearing conceded possession in midfield and Ramires escaped Jose Enrique far too easily before scoring at the near post with a shot Reina should have saved.

Verb

far (third-person singular simple present fars, present participle farring, simple past and past participle farred)

1. (transitive, rare) To send far away.
   • 1864, Elizabeth Gaskell, Cousin Phillis:

     But I wish he'd been farred before he ever came near this house, with his “Please Betty” this, and “Please Betty” that, and drinking up our new milk as if he'd been a cat. I hate such beguiling ways.

   • 1962, Thomas Berger, Reinhart in Love:

     […] so Joe come to me and he uz sore as a boil and said you goddam prevert, I don't want no twenny-two-year-old mechanic who still pulls his pood in the toilet, and farred me.

Noun

far (uncountable)

2. Emmer (a type of wheat), especially in the context of Roman use of it.
   • 1756, Aurelius Cornelius Celsus, Medicine: In Eight Books, page 108:

     A cataplasm made from any meal is heating, whether it be of wheat, or of far, or barley, or bitter vetch, ...

   • 1857, John Marius Wilson, The Rural Cyclopedia:

     Almost all the rustic writers agree in this, that far is most proper for wet clay land, and triticum for dry land. 'In wet red clays,' says Cato, 'sow far; and in dry, clean, and open lands, sow triticum.'

   • 1872, John Cordy Jeaffreson, Brides and Bridals, volume 1, page 201:

     Our wedding-cake is the memorial of a practice, that bore a striking resemblance to, if it was not derived from, confarreatio, the form of marriage that had fallen into general disuse amongst the Romans in the time of Tiberius. Taking its name from the cake of far and mola salsa that was broken over the bride's head, confarreatio was attended with an incident that increases its resemblance to the way in which our ancestors used at their weddings objects symbolical of natural plentifulness.

   • 1919, Carl Holliday, Wedding Customs Then and Now, page 32:

     The early Romans broke a cake of far and mola salsa (salted meal) over the bride's head, — a symbol of plentifulness, […]

Noun

far (plural fars)

1. (UK, dialect) A litter of piglets; a farrow.

Related terms

• farola

Inflection

Synonyms

• fader

Coordinate terms