Word play

This is a bit easier than the last one, but I’m hoping it will take at least 10 minutes to crack. As always, put your guesses in spoiler boxes for those who don’t wander by for 15 or 20 minutes … :wink:

What is the significance of the following list?

BUT
COP
DIN
FLAT
HAM
JAB
JIG
LAD
MAT
RUB
SHIM
SPAT
STAG
SUM
SWAG

Oh, call it two minutes…

The word ends in ?, add the suffix -?ER to make a new word.

And? IOW – why are SUP, FAT, and ROB not on the list?

ETA: I’d have to call it 12 minutes, not 2. :stuck_out_tongue:

You also have to add the last letter of the short word before you add ER?

And? IOW – why are SUP, FAT, and ROB not on the list?

Because the short words are also real words in and of themselves?

In those cases, the basic word meaning does not change.

But so are SUP, FAT and ROB.

Is it because

the new words are unrelated to the original words, but SUP FAT and ROB produce related words?

If so, RUB does not belong in the original list, because

the tree was named “rubber” because the sap was used to rub out mistakes. In the UK, an eraser is still called a rubber for this reason.

I was thinkingbecause they have the same etymological root as SUPPER, FATTER and ROBBER. But that would exclude RUB and possibly SPAT too, wouldn’t it?

Once you added the IOW, that gave me a better answer. (And I timed the 2 minutes from when I popped into the thread.)

The new word is substantially different from the original word. But (negative conjunction) -> butter (food); cop (slang for police) -> copper (metal, and origin of the slang “cop”); stag (male deer) -> stagger (what a pirate does after drinking too much rum); etc. But sup (eat a meal) -> supper (third meal of the day); fat (overweight) -> fatter (become overweight); rob (pillage, plunder, rifle, loot, drink up!) -> robber (one who pillages, etc.).

Added on preview: Yep, what those three people said.

The original words are not related to the new words formed by adding the ?er.

Wow, I am way to slow.

RUB definitely doesn’t belong on the original list, though.

Did not know that about RUB, so I stand corrected on that.

Excellent work, all!

they’re in alphabetical order?

heh - that’s what I was going to say :slight_smile:

Well, that’s certain true …

Hmm. Flat and flatter (for at least one meaning of flatter, ie, more flat) don’t really fit on your list. Of course, an apartment in Britain certainly has nothing to do with complimenting somebody with the intention of swaying their opinion.

Well, you could also argue that one who adds numbers together is a summer.

Sure, but adding numbers together does not a summer make, if you ask any math-challenged victim of that oddly, appropriately conflated-meaning term, “summer school.”