G'day Dicho,

The only form I have ever heard is the one that I use ... usually in a jocular sense, since it is not really a local expression ... 'druthers'. The spelling 'drathers' sounds like some pedant desperately trying to force the expression back towards "Proper English"! Your example of 'ruthers' suggests that the 'u' substituting for 'a' is a genuine local accent of the US south.

I don't know what level of 'Oxford Dictionary' you have. I usually work with their 'concise' (one-volume) dictionaries and, for the last three or four editions, have used The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary, which emanates from the the Australian National Dictionary Centre.

I also use, for reference purposes The Australian National Dictionary, a 2-volume dictionary on historical principles, in the OED format, published by Oxford in 1988. I think there is a new version just out or about to be published, but I use it mainly for an informed view of the Australian usage of English words in the period on the colonial songs, so I am not desperate to upgrade.

Oxford has gone on to produce a range of these 'national' dictionaries ... I have seen one for New Zealand and another for South Africa. I would invest in one for any area in which I was involved in the use and meaning of words across a period of time. I suspect that English is becoming too complex a subject to deal with in any single publication ... even a 28=volume one!

Regards,

Bob Bolton