wether

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwɛðɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɛðə/
• Rhymes: -ɛðə(ɹ)
• Homophones: weather; whether (wine–whine merger)

From Middle English wether, wethir, wedyr, from Old English weþer (“a wether, ram”), from Proto-West Germanic *weþru, from Proto-Germanic *weþruz (“wether”), from Proto-Indo-European *wet- (“year”).

• wedder (dialectal)

wether (plural wethers)

1. A castrated goat.
2. A castrated ram.
   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i], page 179, column 1:

     I am a tainted Weather of the flocke, / Meeteſt for death, the weakeſt kinde of fruite

• bellwether

wether (third-person singular simple present wethers, present participle wethering, simple past and past participle wethered)

1. (transitive) To castrate a male sheep or goat.

wether

1. Archaic spelling of weather.
   • 1527, George Joye, The storie of my state after the bishop had receyued the pryours letters‎^[1]:

     There was a great fyer in the chamber, the wether was colde, and I saw now and then a Bishop come out;

     cited after Samuel Roffey Maitland, 1866, p. 8

• reweth