Oxford "-er"
Two years earlier The Western Gazette reported that "W. Neilson was elected captain of 'rugger' and T. N. Perkins of 'socker'"[5] and Henry Watson Fowler recommended socker in preference to "soccer" to emphasise its correct pronunciation (i.e. hard "cc/ck").
[8] 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.
"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.
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 (/ipʁ/) that some soldiers found difficult to pronounce.
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).
[16] 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,[17] 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.
[18] The programme's producer, Peter Baxter, cited Backers as his own nickname and Jenkers as that of commentator and cricketing journalist, Christopher Martin-Jenkins[19] (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".
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".
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).
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[54] 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 origin of bonkers (initially meaning light-headed and, latterly, crazy) is uncertain, but seems to date from the Second World War[61] and is most likely an "-er" coinage derived from "bonk" (in the sense of a blow to the head).
[63] 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".
