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); -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

Before put ting its shoes on the market, Du Pont passed out 19,000 pairs to human test ers who ranged from the Newburgh police force, through its own salesmen and secretaries, to kindergarten kids.

From Time Magazine Archive

They will come on Mother’s Day, and the sixth graders will put on a play in honor of our moth- ers and the foreigners.

From "The Queen of Water" by Laura Resau