Doers, Keepers and

Several years ago, many people laughed at George Bush for saying "I'm the decider." This seemingly innocuous statement was widely considered a major gaff. This might be perplexing to someone who is not well versed in the nuances of the language. A pretty good "quick and dirty" rule in English is: to refer to the agent that performs an action, add the "-er" to the verb designating that action. Thus, one who fights fires is a firefighter. One who hunts is a hunter. And so on.

But like many "rules," this one has whole a mess of complications. There are many words used to describe agents performing actions that do not follow the -er pattern, and there are many that do, but in unexpected ways.

One who fishes, for example, we would be tempted to call a fisher. And this was once common, like in the King James Bible when Jesus says "I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). But today we would say "fisherman" or even "fisher-person," as many people are keen to remove gender references from language. Gender references in language are controversial, though, so if a non-native speaker said "fisher-person," they would be corrected in many instances even if they knew what they were doing.

Another oddball is "keeper," which does mean "one who keeps," as in, "the keeper of the kingdom." But it can also mean the the thing kept. When a fisher catches a big fish, she might say, "that's a keeper." One who tends bar is a bartender, but if that same person is seen as "keeping" the bar, they are a "barkeep."

Sometimes the -er rule holds, but the word choice is unexpected. In baseball, the player who swings the bat is the batter, not the swinger. "Swingers" are married people that have sex with other people in an open arrangement. So calling the batter the swinger would really get a laugh. The player who catches the ball thrown at the batter is the catcher. But the person who throws the ball at the batter is not the thrower, but the pitcher. When any other player throws the ball, it's a throw, but when the pitcher throws the ball at the batter it's a pitch. The person who delivers the mail is not a mail-deliverer, but a mail carrier. One who builds houses is a builder, but it is more common to say "carpenter," even though there is no corresponding verb "to carpent."

President Bush wouldn't have gotten in any trouble if he would have said, "I'm the decision maker," but even this is kind of uncommon. It probably would have been most uncontroversial to say "I make the decisions." But a big problem here is expectations. Breaking grammatical rules is often a feature of good rhetoric. By applying the rule in an unexpected way, the utterance becomes more memorable and distinctive. So when Bush said "I'm the decider," this may have been a conscious rhetorical move. The American people, however, were accustomed to making fun of him for other silly things that he said. So instead of seeing this as cute or clever or whatever, Bush sounded like a child.

Now that you are thoroughly perplexed, be advised that the -er rule is perfectly fine in terms of understanding. More often than not, it will work well enough to convey your meaning, and even if you end up looking silly you'll learn something.