Yonder means over there, at a distance but still in sight. Yonder hill, over yonder, yonder in the field.
It fills a gap English otherwise lacks: this is near, that is further, and yonder is further still and visible — a three-way distinction many languages keep and English has mostly lost. It survives in dialect and in older writing. Note the wild blue yonder.
1adjectiveyonderOver there, at a distance but still in sight.
“The old farmer pointed to yonder hill and said the sheep were grazing there.”
yonder is a position.
Old English geonre comes from geond, yond, from a Germanic root meaning that one over there.
Proto-Germanic
*jainaz
Old English
ġeonre — thither; yonder
Middle English
yonder
English, today
yonder
From Middle English yonder, yondre, ȝondre, ȝendre, from Old English ġeonre (“thither; yonder”), equivalent to yond (from ġeond, from Proto-Germanic jainaz) + -er, as in hither, thither. Cognate with Scots ȝondir (“yonder”), stq tjunder (“over there, yonder”), Dutch ginder (“over there; yonder”), Middle Low German ginder, gender (“over there”), German jenseits (“on the other side, beyond”), Gothic 𐌾𐌰𐌹𐌽𐌳𐍂𐌴 (“thither”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA