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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 ...
In modern American English, most of these words have the ending -er. [ 21 ] [ 22 ] The difference is most common for words ending in -bre or -tre : British spellings calibre , centre , fibre , goitre , litre , lustre , manoeuvre , meagre , metre (length) , mitre , nitre , ochre , reconnoitre , sabre , saltpetre , sepulchre , sombre , spectre ...
In English, the -er suffix can signify: an agent noun, e.g., "singer" a degree of comparison, e.g., "louder" Oxford "-er", a colloquial and sometimes facetious suffix prevalent at Oxford University from about 1875
"er", a filler word in English; Er, alternate spelling for Yer (Ъ / ъ), the hard-sign letter of the Cyrillic alphabet; Suffix -er -er, a suffix added to adjectives or adverbs to form a comparative (e.g., fast to faster)-er, a suffix added to a noun to indicate resident of, as in New Yorker-er, a suffix added to a verb to make it an agent noun ...
Second, medical roots generally go together according to language, i.e., Greek prefixes occur with Greek suffixes and Latin prefixes with Latin suffixes. Although international scientific vocabulary is not stringent about segregating combining forms of different languages, it is advisable when coining new words not to mix different lingual roots.
In his book The American Language, first published in 1919, H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) credited the mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns to Al Capp's American comic strip Li'l Abner (1934–1977) [4] rather than to the influence of "Sputnik", first recorded in 1957, [5] or "beatnik", first recorded in 1958.
Oxford spelling (also Oxford English Dictionary spelling, Oxford style, or Oxford English spelling) is a spelling standard, named after its use by the Oxford University Press, that prescribes the use of British spelling in combination with the suffix -ize in words like realize and organization instead of -ise endings.
French-derived words that in American English end with -er, such as fiber or center, retain British spellings (fibre and centre). This rule is much more relaxed than the -our rule, with kilomet er ( kilomet re ) being quite acceptable while meag er ( meag re ) and somb er ( somb re ) may not even be noticed.