Talk:Oxford "-er"

Worcester

I thought Worcester was Wuggers.--217.134.89.203 18:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Muggles

"Muggles" (for "non-magic people"), derived from "mug", is virtually an '-er' coinage

How can "Muggles" be seen, even "virtually", as an example of the Oxford '-er'? Flapdragon 00:11, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I certainly heard "Wuggins" in my time, but have inserted "Wuggers" as well. I think "Muggles" can be regarded as a near-"-er" (Partridge allows for such forms), but perhaps since it's a literary invention, it's stretching a point anyway.

The vowel sound at the end of -le in UK English is the same as in -er (pedants might disagree by referring to the first a syllabilised consonant but it is practically the same), the only real difference is the 'l'.GordyB 14:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Twickers

From the first sentence of the Twickenham Stadium article:

Twickenham Stadium (usually known as just Twickenham or Twickers) is a stadium located in the Twickenham ...

Does that make it an Oxford "-er"? --Philip Baird Shearer 15:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

It follows the pattern - abbreviate the original to one syllable, then add the "-ers". Twickenham would be the location of the annual Oxford-Cambridge rugger match.70.67.185.209 (talk) 20:23, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

"Butters"

The adjective butters, abbreviated from "butt ugly", is a 21st century example of the "-er" as "street" slang[.] I don't have the publication cited in support of this etymology to hand, but it seems distinctly improbable at first glance. "Butt ugly" is scarcely a common usage in the UK. My understanding was the term derived from "butterface" (as in "Nice body, but her face...") DublinDilettante 19:06, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Oxford University Project; why?

Why has this article been appropriated by the OU project. It's to do with wider linguistics. And who accorded it "start" class? BONNUIT 05:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Nobody has appropriated anything; an article can be within lots of projects simultaneously. I have just rated it as low importance within the University of Oxford WikiProject. The rating as start class reflects the Oxford section only and seems reasonable to me. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 08:51, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Incomplete list

Need {{incomplete list}} tag? How about the word "bummer"? Bennylin (talk) 05:14, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Is this contemporary

The section on locations give the impression that these terms are current. The problem being that I have never heard any of them! The Bodliean is often shortened to just The Bod. The Radcliff Camera becomes the Rad Cam. And I wouldn't be surprised if most people didn't know what or why the martyrs memorial is.

Of course, this is all just anecdotal. Maybe I just don't know the right sort of upper class rugby boy :) 217.42.56.11 (talk) 11:54, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

This article is, in my experience as an Oxford student and as a native English speaker, complete nonsense. My favourite bit is "The adjective butters, meaning ugly (an abbreviation of "Everything 'but a' face", which is a lovely idea, and almost entirely unfalsiable, but I fear not true. If I had to guess, I'd say the etmology was from the more American word 'butt'. 163.1.209.71 (talk) 17:25, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree. I've lived in Oxford since 1988 and was a graduate student between 1978 and 1981. I don't think I've ever heard these terms used by anybody, and the reference is weak (Oxford Today is little more than a glossy begging letter mailed out to ageing graduates, encouraging them to wallow in nostalgia while reaching for their cheque books). It's possible that these terms are just very dated undergraduate slang, but it's equally possible that they are completely bogus. --Ef80 (talk) 22:07, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

The trend was at its height in the first half of the twentieth century, and fading by the second half.70.67.185.209 (talk) 00:33, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Complete wrong first sentence?

I found this completely confusing, until I realized that the first sentence misdefines the term. This isn't an "abbreviation", as the current version tells us, it's a suffix, is it not? I'm so unfamiliar with this that I'm hesitant to change it, but will do so in a few days if no one convinces me otherwise. Unschool 16:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Jezzer

"Jezzer" is an extremely common nick name for the name "Jeremey". It's not included in the list.

Also, shouldn't the names like Gazza (Gascoin), Prezza (Prescott), etc which all appear in the bottom paragraph, be added to the main list? 86.178.213.43 (talk) 22:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Maybe someone should start an article on the Australia "-zza" suffix. Sharon becomes Shazza. Cheryl becomes Shezza. Darrin becomes Dazza. Terry becomes Tezza. It seems to happen when there's an R in the name. 96.45.196.227 (talk) 17:19, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

There was one about three or four years ago, but an editor took strong exception to it and was determined to have it deleted. BONNUIT (talk) 17:44, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

That's ... unfortunate, since it's not merely easily demonstrated, it's actually "notable"; in Australia, "Bazza" was commonly understood to refer to Barry McKenzie, "... a fictional character originally created by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries (but suggested by Peter Cook) for a comic strip, written by Humphries and drawn by New Zealand artist Nicholas Garland, in the British satirical magazine Private Eye."

More generally, two of the locutions mentioned in the article (footer and brekker) have similar variants still current in New Zealand; "footie" and "brekkie". So the Oxford "-er" has Kiwi counterparts ending in "-ie". --Sdoradus (talk) 04:22, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

'Gaz' (but not AFAIR 'Gazza'/'Gazzer') was an abbreviated version of 'Gary' used in inner-city Salford, Lancashire, c. 1973. I recall seeing it frequently as graffiti on shops etc and being baffled by it(French word for gas??), until some 11-year-olds explained what it meant. RLamb (talk) 14:34, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to me that the r -> z consonant shift nicknames belong in this article at all, there's no support for them being related to the Oxford -er and none of the mentions have citations. There is a very limited amount of actual research on this shift, though there is a lot of speculation, but it seems to be English in origin, not Australian, and unrelated to the Oxford -er as they are often just r -> z and not r -> zza. See: Jez, Gaz, Baz, soz, etc. 2601:8:AD80:7E3:8834:5166:DDB4:985A (talk) 13:41, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Moving on — but not entirely

"Moving on — but not entirely" This doesn't sound encyclopedic to me. Mathiastck (talk) 17:39, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

fixed ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 11:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

preggers

Preggers is used frequently on gossip magazines and websites to mean pregnant. So frequently infact, it appears on thefreedictionary.com 86.159.237.218 (talk) 13:19, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Internet lingo

It seems this extends to the internet lingo for things like Friendster, Twitter, Tumblr, Grindr, and all the other "er" or "r" names. AndrewK760 (talk) 17:50, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

There's more to Oxford "-er" than just adding "-er" to the end of an existing word. The original word is abbreviated, often to no more than the first syllable, and then you add the "-er". Example: "wagger pagger bagger" for "waste paper basket" ultimately shortened to "wagger".70.67.185.209 (talk) 00:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Cupper and copper

Would "cupper" (a cup of tea, even though the form "cuppa" is more common) and "copper" (a police officer) be valid entries here? They seem obvious but are missing so didn't want to edit in case they aren't valid.--Palaluuseri (talk) 20:09, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Typo, or difference in Englishes?

Whatever the faults of the content, at least we ought to have it written correctly. So: As a Yank, despite having read quite a lot of non-American English, I'm not wholly certain that the structure under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_%22-er%22#Other_personal_forms regarding Blashers, "his having assisted in the design [of] a hat for explorers", needs that "of" in British English, or whether it's correct as it stands. GeorgeTSLC (talk) 05:06, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Oxford "-er"/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Why is this part of OU project? It is not to do with the University as such. It's about linguistics. BONNUIT 05:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 05:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 02:04, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Removing unreferenced and spurious examples

per WP:IPC I propose removing examples without citations and niche examples like Chunners, and those that don't even qualify, like Macca. I also think butters is dodgy and belongs more in the urban dictionary Dhalamh (talk) 10:50, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Mozzers

Without the final ‘s’, it may be true that this (Mozzer) is a word for Morrisey but I call Morrisons the supermarket ‘Mozzers’ and I’m not alone in that. Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:08, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Ypres

English soldiers did NOT find Ypres difficult to pronounce. If they had, they would simply have called it Eep. They found it difficult to READ. (since by the expectations of reading English, Y-p-r-e-s is complete nonsense.) TooManyFingers (talk) 03:51, 17 August 2023 (UTC)