Noah Webster
Fother
FOTH'ER, noun [See Food.]
A weight of lead containing eight pigs, and every pig twenty one stone and a half. But the fother is of different weights. With the plumbers in London it is nineteen hundred and a half, and at the mines, it is twenty two hundred and a half.
FOTH'ER, verb transitive [from stuffing. See the preceding word.]
To endeavor to stop a leak in the bottom of a ship, while afloat, by letting down a sail by the corners, and putting chopped yarn, oakum, wool, cotton, etc. Between it and the ship's sides. These substances are sometimes sucked into the cracks and the leak stopped.