$re = '/(?i)\..*? (?P<error>\w+)(?= )/';
$str = '2014-09-12 03:25:16.549: org.eclipse.jetty.server.AsyncHttpConnection WARN - Closing EndPoint making no progress:';
preg_match($re, $str, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php