Oxford "-er"

Colloquial suffix

The Oxford " er", or often " ers", is a colloquial and sometimes facetious suffix prevalent at Oxford University from about 1875, which is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. The term was defined by the lexicographer Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (several editions 1937–61).

The " er" gave rise to such words as rugger and the now archaic footer for Rugby football, while soccer was used for association football. Togger was widely used for the Torpids Eights races held in early Spring, and for the crews that rowed in them. In The Oxford Magazine of 27 February 1906, the Trinity College correspondent reported that "Our First Togger bumped Pembroke on Thursday, New College II on Saturday, Brasenose on Monday, Exeter on Tuesday. The Second Togger bumped Wadham on Thursday, Keble II on Friday, and St. Catherine's on Monday. We wish them continued success." The term "soccer", derived from a transformation/emendation of the "assoc" in association football, was popularised by a prominent English footballer, Charles Wreford Brown (1866–1951). The first recorded use of "soccer" was in 1895 (or even earlier in 1892). Two years earlier The Western Gazette reported that "W. Neilson was elected captain of 'rugger' and T. N. Perkins of 'socker and Henry Watson Fowler recommended socker in preference to "soccer" to emphasise its correct pronunciation (i. e. hard "cc/ck"). In this context, he suggested that "baccy", because of the "cc" in "tobacco", was "more acceptable than soccer" (there being no "cc" in "Association"). "Socker" was the form that appeared in the first edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911). The sports writer E. W. Swanton, who joined the London Evening Standard in 1927, recalled that "Rugby football in those days, I think, was never called anything but rugger unless it were just football". Around the same time the Conservative Minister Leo Amery noted that, for his thirteen year old son Jack, "footer in the rain [was] a very real grievance" at Harrow School.

P. G. Wodehouse makes several references to footer in his early school stories, The Gold Bat (A & C Black, 1904), The White Feather (A & C Black, 1907) and Mike (A & C Black, 1909), all of which had first been serialised in The Captain before appearing in book form. In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1945), Oxford undergraduate Anthony Blanche claims that "I was lunching with my p p preposterous tutor. He thought it very odd my leaving when I did. I told him I had to change for f f footer." In Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963), Wodehouse has Bertie Wooster being asked whether he was fond of rugger, to which he replied "I don't think I know him". As late as 1972 the retired headmaster of a Hertfordshire grammar school recalled "the footer" (by which he meant rugby) having had a poor season in 1953–4.

Typically such words are formed by abbreviating or altering the original word and adding " er". Words to which " er" is simply suffixed to provide a word with a different, though related, meaning – such as "Peeler" (early Metropolitan policeman, after Sir Robert Peel) and "exhibitioner" (an undergraduate holding a type of scholarship called an exhibition) – are not examples. Nor are slang nouns like "bounder" or "scorcher", formed by adding " er" to a verb. "Topper" (for "top hat") may appear to be an example, but as a word meaning excellent person or thing, existed from the early 18th century. Both "top hat" and "topper" as synonymous terms date from Regency times (c.1810–20) and Partridge (op. cit.) seems to suggest that the former, itself originally slang, may have been derived from the latter. Words like "rotter" (a disagreeable person, after "rotten") are somewhere in between. Fiver and tenner (for five and ten pound note respectively) probably do fit the " er" mould, as, more obviously, does oncer (one pound note), though this was always less prevalent than the higher denominations and is virtually obsolete following the introduction of the pound coin in 1983. During the First World War the Belgian town of Ypres was known to British soldiers as "Wipers" (and this is still often used by the town's inhabitants if speaking English). This had some hallmarks of an " er" coinage and the form would have been familiar to many young officers, but "Wipers" was essentially an attempt to anglicize a name that some soldiers found difficult to pronounce. In the BBC TV series Blackadder Goes Forth (Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, 1988), a comedy series set in the trenches during the First World War, Captain Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) and Lieutenant George (Hugh Laurie) occasionally addressed Private Baldrick (Tony Robinson) as Balders. A common extension of the " er" (though here the schwa sound is usually spelled " a" rather than " er") is found in names containing a pronounced "r", e. g., "Darren", "Barry", etc. where in addition to the " er", the "r" sound is replaced by a "zz" so one gets "Dazza" from "Darren", "Bazza" from "Barry".

The " er" form was famously used on BBC radio's Test Match Special by Brian Johnston (1912–94). Johnston was ex Eton and New College, Oxford, and widely known as Johnners. He bestowed nicknames on his fellow commentators on Test cricket: Blowers for Henry Blofeld (who was known in Australia as "Blofly"), Aggers (Jonathan Agnew), Bearders (scorer Bill Frindall, known also as "the Bearded Wonder") and McGillers (Alan McGilvray of the ABC). The habit extended to cricketers such as Phil Tufnell (Tuffers), but the " ie" suffix is more common for commentating ex players of this century, such as Michael Vaughan ("Vaughnie") or Shane Warne ("Warnie"). The former Hampshire County Cricket Club captain Colin Ingleby Mackenzie, whose most usual nickname was McCrackers, was sometimes addressed as Ingers when he made occasional appearances on TMS, and former Middlesex bowler and journalist Mike Selvey was referred to as Selvers. The programme's producer, Peter Baxter, cited Backers as his own nickname and Jenkers as that of commentator and cricketing journalist, Christopher Martin Jenkins (though the latter was better known by his initials, "CMJ"). Following his death in 1994, the satirical magazine Private Eye published a cartoon of Johnston arriving at the gates of heaven with the greeting "Morning, Godders". An earlier Eye cartoon by McLachlan, reproduced in the 2007 edition of Wisden, included in its long caption a reference to former England bowler Fred Trueman as Fredders (in fact, his common nickname, bestowed by Johnston, was "Sir Frederick"), while yummers (i. e. "yummy") was applied to "another lovely cake sent in by one of our listeners". Blowers (Henry Blofeld) has continued the tradition, referring on one occasion to a particular stroke as inexplickers (inexplicable).

Bonners was undergraduate slang for bonfire (c. 1890s), possibly, as Partridge suggests, an allusion to Bishop Edmund Bonner of London (c. 1500–1569) who was involved in the burning of alleged heretics under Queen Mary I.
Bullers for the University Police, or bulldogs: for example, "The [University] proctors go about accompanied by small, thickset men in blue suits and bowler hats, who are known as bullers" (Edmund Crispin (1946) The Moving Toyshop). Bumpers for a bumps race in rowing was in use at both Oxford and Cambridge from about the turn of the 20th century and may have arisen first at Shrewsbury School. Congratters (or simply, gratters), now very dated as a form of congratulations, was recorded by Desmond Coke (1879–1931) in Sandford of Merton (1903). Cuppers is an inter collegiate sporting competition, derived from "cup". Divvers referred to divinity as a subject of study, as, for example, when John Betjeman, as an undergraduate in 1928, published "a special 'Divvers' number of The University News, complete with cut out Old and New Testament cribs in the form of shirt cuffs to enable candidates to cheat in the exam". Eccer (pronounced ekker) for exercise. Sonners was the nickname of William Stallybrass, the inter war principal of Brasenose.

Brekker, breakker or brekkers (for breakfast) is a coinage from the 1880s still in occasional use. In 1996, Jessica Mitford (1917–1996) in one of her final letters to her sister, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, referred to "proper boiled eggs for breakker". Shampers (champagne) occurs frequently, often spelt champers: "They like champers up north". At Cambridge University, cleaning staff who change bed linen and towels in college rooms are referred to as "bedders". Simon Raven (1927–2001), describing an episode on military service in the late 1940s, referred several times to a particular brigadier as "the Brigger". Terms from Harrow School include bluer (blue blazer) and yarder (school yard). The common abbreviation "bant" is an archaism the word banter people hold to have been derived from actually being slang itself, a cruel victim of the Oxford "er". The original word "bant" refers to a drinking toll exacted on those passing from the main quadrangle of University College, Oxford to its secondary Radcliffe "quad" between the hours of 7 and 10 PM, The tollgate itself being the entrance to a shared student room, and the toll being the rapid consumption of an alcoholic beverage. A flat sided conker (fruit of a horse chestnut) is known as a cheeser, an " er" contraction of "cheese cutter". The names applied to conkers that have triumphed in conker fights are arguably " er" forms ("one er", "twelver", etc), though "conker" itself is derived from a dialect word for the shell of a snail.

There are few " ers" in the books of P. G. Wodehouse, though, with reference to a boundary in cricket scoring four runs, his poem, "The Cricketer in Winter" contained the line, "And giving batsmen needless fourers" (which he rhymed with "more errs"). The " er" was evident also in the school cricketing stories of E. F. Benson: "Owlers (this, of course, was Mr Howliss)" (David Blaize, 1916). In the two Chimneys novels of Agatha Christie, a pompous Cabinet Minister was nicknamed Codders because of his bulging eyes (presumably an allusion to the cod fish). Evelyn Waugh referred to his books Remote People (1931) and Black Mischief (1932) as Remoters and Blackers and to Madresfield Court, the country seat of the Earls Beauchamp, as Madders.

Evidence of badders for the racquet sport of badminton is largely anecdotal, as it is in respect of the horse trials held since 1949 in the grounds of Badminton House, Gloucestershire. The same is true of Skeggers (the Lincolnshire seaside resort of Skegness, famously described in a railway poster of 1908 as "so bracing") and Honkers, for the former British colony of Hong Kong, though this form (probably late 20th century) has appeared on a number of websites and in print and Wodehouse's first employer, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC, founded 1865), is sometimes referred to in the City of London as Honkers and Shankers. The stadium at Twickenham in South West London, used for major Rugby Union fixtures, including the annual Oxford v. Cambridge 'Varsity match, is often abbreviated to Twickers and journalist Frank Keating has referred to the annual lawn tennis championships at Wimbledon as Wimbers. The Gloucestershire town of Cheltenham is sometimes reduced to Chelters, particularly by visitors to the Cheltenham Gold Cup horse races. Chatsworth, seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, has been referred to as Chatters in Private Eye.

When Roald Dahl was at Repton School (1929–34) the captain of a sport would award colours by saying "graggers [i. e. congratulations] on your teamer" to the selected boy. Test Match Special aside, by the mid 20th century the " er" was being replaced by snappier nicknames. Thus, in the stories of Anthony Buckeridge (1912–2004), set in a preparatory school of the 1950s, Jennings was "Jen", and not "Jenners". Even so, in the Harry Potter books of J. K. Rowling (b. 1965), Dudley Dursley was addressed as Dudders. The adjective butters, meaning ugly (an abbreviation of "everything but 'er face"), is a 21st century example of the " er" as "street" slang, as in "She's well butters, innit". This is similar in concept to the well established starkers (stark naked). The origin of bonkers (initially meaning light headed and, latterly, crazy) is uncertain, but seems to date from the Second World War and is most likely an " er" coinage derived from "bonk" (in the sense of a blow to the head). Similarly, crackers is probably derived from "cracked" and ultimately from "crazy"; Partridge cited "get the crackers" as a late 19th century slang for "to go mad". The late 20th century form, probably Australian in origin, that gave rise to such nicknames as "Bazza" (Barry Humphries's character Barry McKenzie), "Gazza" (Paul Gascoigne), "Hezza" (Michael Heseltine), "Prezza" (John Prescott), "Bozza" (Boris Johnson), "Jezza" (Jeremy Clarkson), "Wozza" (Antony Worrall Thompson), "Wazza" (Wayne Rooney), and "Mozza" (Morrissey) has some similarities to the Oxford " er". "Macca" for Sir Paul McCartney and others is another variant, McCartney's former wife Heather Mills having been referred to in the press as "Lady Macca" (or sometimes "Mucca"). In Private Eye occasional spoof romance, Duchess of Love, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall addressed her husband, Prince Charles, as "Chazza", while he referred to her as Cammers.