rubber vs eraser | WordReference Forums

rubber vs eraser

    • The forum's British English dictionary is a fine place to start: rubber: noun, 3. chiefly Brit a piece of rubber or felt used for erasing something written, typed, etc; eraser
     
    Yes, Minpeng, in the United States, eraser is used.
    I remember being quite shocked many, many years ago
    when a Brit asked me if I had a rubber.
    I thought he was asking me if I had a condom!!!
     
    You live and learn! It would never have crossed my mind to use 'eraser' for 'rubber' though now that I know what it is it makes perfect sense. :)
     
    Yes, we all said rubber at school - but I do hear many BrE speakers also saying eraser, so that is not exclusively AmE - though the pronunciation is different. BrE speakers say eraser​ with /z/ and AmE speakers say it with /s/.
     
    In the USA, it's almost always "eraser". A "rubber" is slang for condom.

    Michael: (an Englishman in an American school having made an error on his paper): Julie, do you have a rubber?

    Julie (teasing): Why, are you asking me out on a date?
     
    Where I live, students nowadays use "eraser" to refer to a piece of rubber used for rubbing mistakes in writing.

    When I was at school, we refer to it as "rubber".

    I wonder which word native speakers use nowadays?

    Thanks.
     
    Again, BE/AE differences. In the UK we use rubber, but in the US 'rubber' can refer to a condom. They use 'eraser'.
     
    I have merged Karen's thread with one of the earlier ones on rubber vs. eraser. I hope she finds the answers helpful, but if not, she's welcome to ask additional questions here.

    JustKate
    English Only moderator
     
    In the US, people of a certain age will also remember that "rubbers" used to refer to overshoes that one wore in wet weather. However it was never common here to use the word "rubber" to mean an eraser.
     
    I imagine the "rubber" employed by some folks above to erase their mistakes is the same we used to call indiarubber—and sometimes India rubber—when I started my love affair with English, before the Punic Wars?

    GS :)
     
    natkretep said:
    Yes, we all said rubber at school - but I do hear many BrE speakers also saying eraser, so that is not exclusively AmE - though the pronunciation is different. BrE speakers say eraser with /z/ and AmE speakers say it with /s/.
    Click to expand...
    Which name is more commonly used in BE, please? Rubber or eraser?
    IMG_20200917_114652.jpg
     
    Yes, they're definitely rubbers to me, and 'eraser' still has a very foreign (AmE) sound to it, but it's been a long time since I had to use one in a classroom or even buy one (they last an awfully long time), so usage might be changing. I think I've seen 'eraser' in a shop.
     
    On the internet, the rubber (post#19) has been referred to as "rubber eraser". Is the term "rubber eraser" used in BE to refer to such rubber?
     
    Well, perhaps... Maybe, 'rubber' would tell us about the material from which the eraser is made. A rubber eraser as opposed to a sponge eraser for white boards...

    But for me, 'rubber' is the default word for the thing that erases...
     
    boozer said:
    Ours back in school were simply a piece of sponge, no handle. :D
    Click to expand...
    They don't sound as if they'd be much use for throwing at pupils' heads. Not like the ones in Keith's picture, which were regularly thrown at ours by be-gowned Latin teachers when our attention started to drift during his recitation of Horatius defending that bridge, or hearing for the millionth time about Caesar laying waste to some city or other.
     
    heypresto said:
    They don't sound as if they'd be much use for throwing at pupils' heads. Not like the ones in Keith's picture, which were regularly thrown at ours by be-gowned Latin teachers.
    Click to expand...
    We used the chalk for that :D I myself have been known to hurl a piece of chalk so viciously, that, if it missed, it would literally splatter against the wall behind the miscreant student :D
     
    It looks as if the meaning of rubber as an "object used to rub, clean or smooth" came long before the discovery/invention of India-rubber (18th century). In earlier times bread was used to erase pencil marks and a sharp knife to remove ink from vellum; nowadays synthetic materials have superseded India-rubber but the word remains independent of the substance.
     
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