preggers

[George Thompson]

This is perhaps an example of what is called, I think, the "Oxford 'er' -- a practice among Oxford students of forming words by truncating a standard word and adding 'er' -- "brekkers" (breakfast)?  I have only dim memories of reading a discussion of this, by an author who who took the practice as representative of English slang, compared its inanity with the vigor of American slang, and decided that we need look no further for the reason why the sun set upon the British Empire.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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