er
/ɜɹ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.24 in modern English
2
Scrabble Score
2
Letters
1
Syllables
2
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An occurrence of the interjection "er".
name
Initialism of Elizabeth Regina (“Queen Elizabeth”).
name
Initialism of Edward Rex (on coins, letterboxes, etc.) The royal cypher for Edward VII, king of Great Britain
British usage
Example Sentences
- "“Er...Feathered Omen, hoot not,” he continued uneasily, “Son of Tanit, hoot not!”"
- "As the years go by, speech reverts to childhood levels of disfluency, with more pauses, more errors, more repeated words, but even the peak years are not great: up to 8 percent of the average person’s word output consists of meaningless fillers and placeholders like um, uh and er."
- "If he—er—disappears—well, it seems to me that we'd both benefit."
- "Liquid Samurai: 'FORMLESS AND INFINITE ARE WE, THE LIQUID SAMURAI. I SERVE MY QUEEN, AS WE HAVE FOR COUNTLESS--' / Mona: 'HEY, I DON'T MEAN TO INTERRUPT, BUT YOU SEEM LIKE YOU'RE MADE OF POWERFUL STUFF. CAN I, ER, STUDY YOU?'"
- "um and er"
- "He ummed and erred his way through the presentation."
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: Er, 余
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɜɹ/
Usage
- Informal
- Intransitive verb
- Transitive verb
- Countable
- Uncountable
- British usage
- American usage
Inflected Forms
err (alternative)
ers (present, singular)
erring (participle, present)
erred (participle, past)
erred (past)
ers (plural)
E.R. (alternative)
E. R. (alternative)