The Oxford "-er", or often "-ers", is a colloquial and sometimes facetious suffix prevalent at Oxford University from about 1875, which is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. The term was defined by the lexicographer Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (several editions 1937–61).
Rugger, footer and soccer
The "-er" gave rise to such words as rugger and the now archaic footer for Rugby football, while soccer was used for association football. Togger was widely used for the Torpids Eights races held in early Spring, and for the crews that rowed in them. In The Oxford Magazine of 27 February 1906, the Trinity College correspondent reported that "Our First Togger bumped Pembroke on Thursday, New College II on Saturday, Brasenose on Monday, Exeter on Tuesday. The Second Togger bumped Wadham on Thursday, Keble II on Friday, and St. Catherine's on Monday. We wish them continued success."
The term "soccer", derived from a transformation/emendation of the "assoc" in Association football, was popularised by a prominent English footballer, Charles Wreford-Brown (1866–1951). The first recorded use of "soccer" was in 1895 (or even earlier in 1892). Two years earlier The Western Gazette reported that "W. Neilson was elected captain of 'rugger' and T. N. Perkins of 'socker'" and Henry Watson Fowler recommended socker in preference to "soccer" to emphasise its correct pronunciation (i.e. hard "cc/ck"). In this context, he suggested that "baccy", because of the "cc" in "tobacco", was "more acceptable than soccer" (there being no "cc" in "Association"). "Socker" was the form that appeared in the first edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911).
The sports writer E. W. Swanton, who joined the London Evening Standard in 1927, recalled that "Rugby football ... in those days, I think, was never called anything but rugger unless it were just football". Around the same time the Conservative Minister Leo Amery noted that, for his thirteen-year-old son Jack, "footer in the rain [was] a very real grievance" at Harrow School.
In literature
P. G. Wodehouse makes several references to footer in his early school stories, The Gold Bat (A & C Black, 1904), The White Feather (A & C Black, 1907) and Mike (A & C Black, 1909), all of which had first been serialised in The Captain before appearing in book form.
In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1945), Oxford undergraduate Anthony Blanche claims that "I was lunching with my p-p-preposterous tutor. He thought it very odd my leaving when I did. I told him I had to change for f-f-footer."
In Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963), Wodehouse has Bertie Wooster being asked whether he was fond of rugger, to which he replied "I don't think I know him".
As late as 1972 the retired headmaster of a Hertfordshire grammar school recalled "the footer" (by which he meant rugby) having had a poor season in 1953–4.
What is and is not
Typically such words are formed by abbreviating or altering the original word and adding "-er". Words to which "-er" is simply suffixed to provide a word with a different, though related, meaning – such as "Peeler" (early Metropolitan policeman, after Sir Robert Peel) and "exhibitioner" (an undergraduate holding a type of scholarship called an exhibition) – are not examples. Nor are slang nouns like "bounder" or "scorcher", formed by adding "-er" to a verb. "Topper" (for "top hat") may appear to be an example, but as a word meaning excellent person or thing, existed from the early 18th century. Both "top hat" and "topper" as synonymous terms date from Regency times (c.1810–20) and Partridge (op. cit.) seems to suggest that the former, itself originally slang, may have been derived from the latter.
Words like "rotter" (a disagreeable person, after "rotten") are somewhere in between. Fiver and tenner (for five and ten pound note respectively) probably do fit the "-er" mould, as, more obviously, does oncer (one pound note), though this was always less prevalent than the higher denominations and is virtually obsolete following the introduction of the pound coin in 1983.