-fer

Bearing or carrying.

Latin ferre, to carry or bear.

Nouns include conifer (Latin conus, cone, so cone-bearing); crucifer (Latin crux, cruc‑, a cross), a type of plant having four petals arranged in the shape of a cross; umbellifer (Latin umbella, parasol, from the shape of the flowers), a plant of the parsley family. A rare example created in English is aquifer (Latin aqua, water, so ‘water-bearing’), a body of permeable rock that can contain or transmit groundwater.

Verbs in ‑fer are usually figurative: transfer (from trans, across, so literally to carry across); defer and differ (both from Latin dis‑, apart); and confer (Latin con‑, together).

The form is not active in the language.

Some words derive from accidents of spelling: duffer, an incompetent or stupid person, is from Scots dowfart, a stupid person; gaffer, a person in charge of others, is probably a contraction of godfather or grandfather. Others are from stems ending in f that contain the suffix ‑er¹ (as in golfer from golf).