ers

¹ American  

[urs, airs] / ɜrs, ɛərs /

noun

1. ervil.

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ERS ² American  

Or E.R.S.

1. Emergency Radio Service.

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-ers ³ American  

1. a semantically empty suffix that creates informal variations of more neutral nouns and adjectives by processes of truncation identical to those of -er (champers; preggers; starkers ); unlike that suffix, however, -ers is apparently productive, and words formed with it do not appear to belong to a restricted linguistic register, as university slang.

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ERS British  

abbreviation

1. earnings related supplement

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Etymology

Origin of ers¹

Middle French < Old Provençal < Late Latin ervus, variant of Latin ervum. See ervil

Origin of -ers³

Perhaps a conflation of -er ⁷ with the final element of bonkers and crackers in the sense “wild, crazy” (unless these words themselves contain this suffix); cf. -s ³

Example Sentences

But we lived in a way unimaginable to 9-5 ers.

From New York Times • Dec. 12, 2018

The United States soon got wind of Guevara’s presence and sent CIA agents and military advis ers to assist the regime of René Barrientos.

From The Guardian • Oct. 5, 2017

Roosevelt Island is fantastic: right in the middle of the Potomac River and filled with woodpeck- ers, frogs, marshes, trails, and a seventeen-foot statue of Roosevelt himself, in shining bronze and larger than life.

From MSNBC • Sep. 9, 2014

View ers who agree are invited to phone or write in support of a new organization called People for the American Way.

From Time Magazine Archive

Our father sprinkled ers and even errers in his sentences as liberally as he gave out his twisted-mouth smiles.

From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou