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October 20, 2011 7:24 PM Subscribe
Offerer or Offeror? No, seriously, which one do you use?
This may seem a bit Tomato/To-mah-to, but I'm curious to know which word people prefer or use: Offerer or Offeror?
Bonus points for good reasons why one is right or wrong, or geographical suggestions on usage variations. Asking for a genuine but very tedious reason and Google has proved inconclusive, so now I'm turning to Me-Fi.
Thanks for your help!
This may seem a bit Tomato/To-mah-to, but I'm curious to know which word people prefer or use: Offerer or Offeror?
Bonus points for good reasons why one is right or wrong, or geographical suggestions on usage variations. Asking for a genuine but very tedious reason and Google has proved inconclusive, so now I'm turning to Me-Fi.
Thanks for your help!
Best answer: Google Ngram search suggests offeror is currently (slightly) more popular, but offerer was once not only more popular but actually the only version in use.
For what it's worth, Black's Law Dictionary doesn't even contain offerer, so I'd say that offeror is standard in legal usage. Bryan Garner, an expert on legal writing, concurs.
posted by jedicus at 7:33 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
For what it's worth, Black's Law Dictionary doesn't even contain offerer, so I'd say that offeror is standard in legal usage. Bryan Garner, an expert on legal writing, concurs.
posted by jedicus at 7:33 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Not wanting to threadsit (ha), but in response to your question TedW, nothing as such. It's for the title of an artwork. Previous works in that series had ended in _er words, e.g. Joker, Driver, but my legal beagle other half(so I see where you're coming from jedicus) insists on Offeror, whereas I lean towards Offerer. The secret's out now - domestic bliss is at stake!
posted by Chairboy at 7:40 PM on October 20, 2011
posted by Chairboy at 7:40 PM on October 20, 2011
I think it is offeror because the one getting the offer is the offeree.
posted by JayRwv at 7:41 PM on October 20, 2011
posted by JayRwv at 7:41 PM on October 20, 2011
My first thought was that this has to be a regional thing, since I've never seen offeror written anywhere before, and it looks really wrong and bizarre to me. If I saw a piece of artwork with offeror in the title, I would think about it (the word) all day, assuming that it was a completely new-to-me word with a meaning other than one who offers. It would just stick out, you know?
But then I thought about it some more, and realized that I'm pretty sure I've never seen offerer used anywhere, either. And now I've looked at the words so much that neither of them sound like real words any more. (And I also have a strange craving for coffee.)
How necessary is it that you use this word? Could you instead substitute something like bringer or giver? If you must choose, my vote is for offerer. Offeror is really brain-assaulting.
posted by phunniemee at 7:49 PM on October 20, 2011 [4 favorites]
But then I thought about it some more, and realized that I'm pretty sure I've never seen offerer used anywhere, either. And now I've looked at the words so much that neither of them sound like real words any more. (And I also have a strange craving for coffee.)
How necessary is it that you use this word? Could you instead substitute something like bringer or giver? If you must choose, my vote is for offerer. Offeror is really brain-assaulting.
posted by phunniemee at 7:49 PM on October 20, 2011 [4 favorites]
Best answer: The OED shows usage of "offerer" from the 14th century, with "offeror" appearing in the 19th.
offeror
a. A person who offers something for sale, esp. shares.
b. Law. A person who offers to enter into a binding contract with another.
offerer
1. A person who offers a sacrifice or prayer, etc.; one who brings an offering.
2. A person who presents something for acceptance; one who makes an offer or proposal; one who makes an attempt at something; a bidder, etc. Cf. also offeror n.
posted by Cortes at 7:50 PM on October 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
offeror
a. A person who offers something for sale, esp. shares.
b. Law. A person who offers to enter into a binding contract with another.
offerer
1. A person who offers a sacrifice or prayer, etc.; one who brings an offering.
2. A person who presents something for acceptance; one who makes an offer or proposal; one who makes an attempt at something; a bidder, etc. Cf. also offeror n.
posted by Cortes at 7:50 PM on October 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
I vote for offeror. Spell-check always hated it though. And this entire line of thinking has given me the sweats and flashbacks to 1L Contracts.
posted by atomicstone at 7:52 PM on October 20, 2011
posted by atomicstone at 7:52 PM on October 20, 2011
I'm changing my vote-go with offerer. Because lawyers make up words like it's their actual jobs. Sue, leagalese is offeror, but if what you're doing is naming a work of art, who cares? These are people who thing "justiciable" is a word. I tell you, it's NOT.
posted by atomicstone at 7:54 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by atomicstone at 7:54 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
I agree with phunniemee that 'offeror' seems horrible and wrong. However I am not in the legal profession and it seems that there might be some usage in that particular field. If I were to use the word in an everyday writing context I would not even have considered another spelling beside 'offerer'.
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:55 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:55 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I see you're in Scotland, but I've never read "offeror" in England, so it must be restricted to legal use only here. If your work is about something legal, then maybe that term will be best. Otherwise, no.
On an etymological note, -or agent endings are typically only used for words that are identified as coming from Latin (sometimes by way of French, sometimes directly). This is nowhere near a strict rule, as many words from Latin take -er. To make matters more complicated, "offer" does ultimately come from Latin, but was in Old English so it would be odd to consider it anything but native. The presence of the -or ending in "offeror" may be some holdover from Law French, or, given its late date, nothing but an affectation. Lawyers had (and still have) a habit of creating their own terminology, and I'm (politically and linguistically) inclined to ignore them outside of strictly legal use.
posted by Jehan at 7:56 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
On an etymological note, -or agent endings are typically only used for words that are identified as coming from Latin (sometimes by way of French, sometimes directly). This is nowhere near a strict rule, as many words from Latin take -er. To make matters more complicated, "offer" does ultimately come from Latin, but was in Old English so it would be odd to consider it anything but native. The presence of the -or ending in "offeror" may be some holdover from Law French, or, given its late date, nothing but an affectation. Lawyers had (and still have) a habit of creating their own terminology, and I'm (politically and linguistically) inclined to ignore them outside of strictly legal use.
posted by Jehan at 7:56 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Ah, I was about to make etymological guesses along the lines of Jehan as well....
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:57 PM on October 20, 2011
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:57 PM on October 20, 2011
Response by poster: Wow - thanks for some great answers! phunniemee: I think it really does need to be that word, as the sense of it I'm interested in is closest to offerer in Cortes comment. I also like the fact that it's the older word, by the look of things. At the moment I think I broadly concur with the rest of you too and I'm leaning towards Offerer - that will sit better with the rest of the series too.
posted by Chairboy at 8:07 PM on October 20, 2011
posted by Chairboy at 8:07 PM on October 20, 2011
Response by poster: Yup - that's my mind made up - Offerer it is. Thanks for all your help people!
posted by Chairboy at 8:14 PM on October 20, 2011
posted by Chairboy at 8:14 PM on October 20, 2011
For what it's worth, Black's Law Dictionary doesn't even contain offerer, so I'd say that offeror is standard in legal usage. Bryan Garner, an expert on legal writing, concurs.
Bryan Garner doesn't concur; he is the editor of Black's Law Dictionary!
"Offeror" is the correct spelling in a legal context, which is the only context in which I've seen the word.
posted by John Cohen at 9:09 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Bryan Garner doesn't concur; he is the editor of Black's Law Dictionary!
"Offeror" is the correct spelling in a legal context, which is the only context in which I've seen the word.
posted by John Cohen at 9:09 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I'll see your Garner-edited Black's Law Dictionary and raise you the Garner-authored "Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage" :
posted by QuantumMeruit at 6:26 AM on October 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
offeror; offerer. The former is now standard in legal texts, although the latter was much used in the 19th century.From the entry on -ER:
...The historical tendency in the law has been to make the Latinate -or the correlative of -ee (q.v.)... Oftentimes, however, the choice of suffix seems based on caprice. In the famous contracts case Household Fire & Carriage Accident Ins. Co. v. Grant, [1879] 4 Ex.D. 216 (C.A.), Lord Justice Thesiger used the spellings acceptor and offerer, whereas the modern trend is to write accepter and offeror in legal contracts.FWIW, "offeror" was my knee-jerk reaction.
posted by QuantumMeruit at 6:26 AM on October 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
Another Brit chiming in to say that here we'd only write "offerer". "Offeror" looks madly incorrect to these eyes and I'm certain my school English teachers would have marked it as such.
posted by Decani at 7:24 AM on October 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Decani at 7:24 AM on October 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
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posted by TedW at 7:32 PM on October 20, 2011 [1 favorite]