Rejector or rejecter?
 

When referring to a tuned circuit designed to attenuate signals at a particular frequency is it correct to speak of a rejector circuit or a rejecter circuit?

I have always considered the former to be correct but Micro-soft Word underlines it in red suggesting that it is spelt incorrectly. As I type "rejector" for this thread it is also underlined in red.

I have always assumed that the difference is explained by the difference between English and American English spelling but research on the web suggests this is not the case. I didn't manage to find any particularly helpful information on this subject on the web, hence this post.

Searching this forum site has revealed that both spellings have been used in posts, although "rejector" seems to have been used most often.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

I would go for rejector (for the circuit). I might be persuaded to go for rejecter (for a person who is rejecting something) but I am not sure. You can always put a word in your personal dictionary.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Whatever American English dictionary says - go for the opposite.
It has served me quite well. ;)

I am in no doubt that you are talking of a Rejector..

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

I'd view this as a bit of pedantry: either will be understood by anyone with any degree of linguistic competence.

[In many instances, "American" spellings/pronunciations are rather more historically accurate: UK English has evolved but the US version remains truer to the original]

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Hmmm. Weldor is a person. Welder is a machine he or she uses.

Though I'd instinctively go for rejector circuit.

David

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Mr Weldor xxxx esq.
Is he pleased with that? My coat is on - I am out of here!
A night out in the rain...

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Thanks chaps, I'll stick with rejector. :thumbsup:

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

You won't go far wrong with that.
Cheers Colin.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Many words have alternative 'er' and 'or' endings, and it isn't simply a matter of American and British usage. Adapter and Adaptor is an obvious example (my Firefox spell checker (British English) objects to the former).

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Any excuse suffices to send me trotting up to the landing to consult a volume of the OED, where "rejecter", meaning somebody who rejects, is traced back to 1570. The alternative "rejector" with the same meaning is first recorded in 1752, and is always employed for the electronic circuit, where the earliest quotes supplied are from a Wireless World article in July 1923.

Paul

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Good point - way off topic. Sorry.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Where COMPONENTS are concerned I always use the "or" ending, so resistor rather than resister and rejector rather than rejecter.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

'Rejector' is used by Marconiphone in 1925 as a noun given to their tuned circuit in series with the aerial.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

I recall reading old Electronic Engineering magazines, where correspondence debates over 'computer' vs 'computor' took place. Advocates for 'computer' pointed out that the rain-clearers on his car windscreen were 'windscreen wipers' not 'wipors'. This was countered by someone else pointing out that the thing which made the wipers move was a thing called a motor, not a moter.

I have a calculator beside me as I type on this computer. There's no right answer, but I'd go for rejector myself.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

We will be back on 'wireless and radio' or 'frame and field' arguments soon lol. Personally I communicate with people in so many countries these days that anything that gets the idea across has got to be acceptable. If someone is writing a technical article though it's better if the English is correct.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

The (any) English dictionary is merrily a report not instructions for use. I don't mind how a word is spelt very much as long as the meaning gets through.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Well, yes and no. It gives the way to spell a word unless either you couldn't care less or you have an idiosyncratic preference for something different or a point to make about the language, and at least in England "rejector" seems to be pretty much universally employed in electrical contexts.

As G6Tanuki has said, American spellings often have more of historical justification - Walter Savage Landor gave many examples of this early in the 19th century. And the push to regularise spelling still has its opponents - the poet Theodore Enslin considered it to be "common huckstering" and kept to various spellings of his own, such as "lense" for the thing that focusses light. There doesn't seem to be any general reason for the -er/-or variations, even among components "transformor" seems not to exist (yet).

We're clearly under American word surveillance here, though, as not just "lense" and "transformor" get squiggly red lines under them in the paragraph above, but "focusses" and "regularise" too, and as far as I know the former is standard in British English and the latter at the very least a fully accepted alternative.

Paul

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

That's a really good one, which escaped me - yet "capacitor" and "transistor" and loads of others do.

I did Google 'or and er' and some guidelines exist, such as single- or multi-syllable originating verb; does it end in multiple consonants; does it end in double-s; though there are exceptions to each general rule.

It's irregular!

And there's also the -ar ending, though that seems confined to people who do things rather than things which do things (beggar, liar, etc).

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Probably why Esperanto never caught on, too codified. This sort of discussion expands the language, good show.

Re: Rejector or rejecter?
 

Additionally, us RF-types talk of stages like amplifier, tuner, receiver, transmitter, filter, multiplier, mixer - but also of an oscillator a modulator and a detector.

The one thing consistent about the English language is its inconsistency.