i Register
In some senses, er is marked as informal, British, US. Watch for register when choosing this word.
/ɜː/
noun 7name 5intj 1verb 1
Collocations
5ADJ.
perilous, sorry
VERB + ER
date, ends, fidgeting, fight, hurts, let's, like, see
ER + NOUN
'mixer, hoot, i'd, i'm, karin, m-, offline-meeting, omen
PREP.
down, until, with
ADV.
only, rather, then
Definitions
intj
1
Said when hesitating in speech.
“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.
verb
1
To utter the word er when hesitating in speech.
um and er
He ummed and erred his way through the presentation.
noun
1
An occurrence of the interjection "er".
Although Shakespeare refers to “hums and ha’s,” sifting through etiquette manuals and public-speaking guides turns up scant evidence of a prohibition against ums, ers and uhs, which are profuse in the first recording of Thomas Edison’s voice, in 1888. Mr. Erard, rather ingeniously, traces the prohibition on um and other speech flaws to the advent of radio in the early 1920s.
Thesaurus
Synonyms
noun — a trivalent metallic element of the rare earth group
Antonyms
Idioms & Phrases
Example Bank
601
“Er...Feathered Omen, hoot not,” he continued uneasily, “Son of Tanit, hoot not!”
Wiktionary02
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
Wiktionary03
If he—er—disappears—well, it seems to me that we'd both benefit.
Wiktionary04
um and er
Wiktionary05
He ummed and erred his way through the presentation.
Wiktionary06
Although Shakespeare refers to “hums and ha’s,” sifting through etiquette manuals and public-speaking guides turns up scant evidence of a prohibition against ums, ers and uhs, which are profuse in the
WiktionaryUsage Notes
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