A San Diego woman who’s homeschooling her children wonders if there’s a formula that explains why nouns like teacher and writer end in “er,” while others, like professor and conductor, end in “or.” She suspects it has to do with whether the words come from Latin roots or Anglo-Saxon roots. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”Er” and “Or” Endings”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Estella, and I’m from San Diego.
Hi, Estella.
You’ve got a question about language, I’m guessing.
Yes, I do.
My husband and I were having a conversation with our son about words and about prefixes and suffixes, and we came across a problem that we couldn’t answer because we’re trying to homeschool.
And we noticed that certain words like teacher and professor, they have different endings.
Like they have ending for teacher or an OR ending for professor.
And we’re trying to figure out how, why that is.
And there’s other words like conductor or that ends with OR and singer, which ends with.
So how do you take, you know, these verbs and make them into, like, professions that people have?
And how do you decide whether or not it’s an or an OR?
And I came up with this crazy idea that it has something to do with status or prestige of the career that, you know, if you’re a professor, that’s, you know, more status than a teacher.
So you would have an OR.
And, you know, a teacher having less status would have an.
But I came across an anomaly to my theory that, you know, well, I’m going to say it, but I hope nobody is offended.
But janitor ends with OR, and it’s not, you know, anyway.
So we’re trying to figure out how do you decide which is and which is OR.
What a very good question.
I don’t think I’ve had this question before, Martha.
No, I don’t think so.
I was going to say we’re radio announcers.
No, that’s not true.
But, yeah, see, that’s an right?
I’m afraid it is, yeah.
Yeah, you know, I look at my paycheck every two weeks, and yes, it’s definitely an.
Well, Stella, here, I’ve got a couple things.
I’m going to throw something.
You’re a teacher.
You’re homeschooling your kids.
You have one or two children?
I have two children.
And actually, I’m a professor by career.
All right.
So you’re a professor, and you have a couple of kids.
So I’m going to be a little wonky with you and throw some language jargon at you.
All right?
You ready for this?
Stand back.
The nouns that you’re talking about, for example, professor and teacher, are called agent nouns.
Okay.
And they have endings, the E-R and the O-R, that are called agentive suffixes.
What that means is the suffixes make words about people who do a specific thing, like profess, so to speak, or to teach.
Right.
Now, what you’ve done here by trying to determine whether or not status has something to do, whether or not the end with an is OR, is something, this is the third and final wonky term, is you’ve made a play with something we call principle of contrast, which is we often, in our own minds, when we’re trying to process language, we think that because words are spelled differently, or because a part of a word is spelled differently, that it must have a different meaning.
We work really hard to differentiate.
And the truth is, there isn’t always a meaning that can be derived from spelling.
The OR and here actually mean exactly the same thing.
They just mean they take a noun and they turn into a person who does something.
That’s it.
There’s no, the status doesn’t have anything to do with it, all right?
So then why not just make it easy on everyone and just have it be for everything?
Well, let me call up the English Language Academy and just bellyache those guys.
Because they’ve done a horrible job of making the, what a malformed beast we speak.
Well, you know, I heard that there was, you know, that there’s Latin-based words and then there’s German-based words.
And there’s a status difference there.
Well, I don’t agree with that status difference.
You’re on to something, though.
Generally, but not always, Latin-derived words, for example, those that ends in A-T-E, like negotiate, will take an O-R ending.
And generally, but not always, those that we get from Middle English often have E-R endings.
But not always. There are exceptions, for example, from the words that we get from the French, like restaurateur, entrepreneur, they end in EUR.
Doctor. Right.
And then there are a few others like beggar or peddler or liar that end in AR.
So we have some exceptions here. But generally, if you know the etymology of it, when you know that it’s got a Latin root, like professor, then you can be pretty sure that that’s why it takes an OR ending.
Yeah, but I’m all about etymology, and I think it’d be easier to just memorize those endings.
I mean, that’s what we do, right?
But, you know, I’m trying to teach my child to have some kind of conceptual understanding about things.
And, you know, I’m like going, wow, well, why is it that certain words end with OR and why others end with?
And I guess I should just go back and say, hey, just memorize it all.
Well, it might be a way to teach a few lessons about etymology, to make a list of OR professions and a list of professions and kind of look at those root words and say, this one probably comes from the Middle English or the Germanic side, and this one probably comes from the Latin or Romance side.
And you can kind of like…
And then look them up. That would be interesting.
It might be a way to actually have a lesson instead of just memorizing stuff by rote, just to say a little background.
It might work.
Well, I hope we’ve helped you a little bit here.
Don’t forget that in general, OR endings indicate a Latin etymology, and in general, endings indicate a Middle English or Germanic etymology.
Great. Well, thank you so much.
All right. Thanks for calling.
All right. Bye-bye.
Take care yourself, Estella.
Well, if you’ve got a question about professions and the words that they use, say jargon, for example, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.
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