G.
GAS. To impose upon another by a consequential address, or by detailing improbable stories or using “great swelling words”; to deceive; to cheat.
Found that Fairspeech only wanted to “gas” me, which he did pretty effectually.—Sketches of Williams College, p. 72.
GATE BILL. In the English universities, the record of a pupil’s failures to be within his college at or before a specified hour of the night.
To avoid gate-bills, he will be out at night as late as he pleases, and will defy any one to discover his absence; for he will climb over the college walls, and fee his Gyp well, when he is out all night—Grad. ad Cantab., p. 128.
GATED. At the English universities, students who, for misdemeanors, are not permitted to be out of their college after ten in the evening, are said to be gated.
“Gated,” i.e. obliged to be within the college walls by ten o’clock at night; by this he is prevented from partaking in suppers, or other nocturnal festivities, in any other college or in lodgings.—Note to The College, in Blackwood’s Mag., May, 1849.
The lighter college offences, such as staying out at night or missing chapel, are punished by what they term “gating”; in one form of which, a man is actually confined to his rooms: in a more mild way, he is simply restricted to the precincts of the college. —Westminster Rev., Am. ed., Vol. XXXV. p. 241.
GAUDY. In the University of Oxford, a feast or festival. The days on which they occur are called gaudies or gaudy days. “Blount, in his Glossographia,” says Archdeacon Nares in his Glossary, “speaks of a foolish derivation of the word from a Judge Gaudy, said to have been the institutor of such days. But such days were held in all times, and did not want a judge to invent them.”
Come,
Let’s have one other gaudy night: call to me
All my sad captains; fill our bowls; once more
Let’s mock the midnight bell.
Antony and Cleopatra, Act. III. Sc. 11.
A foolish utensil of state,
Which like old plate upon a gaudy day,
’s brought forth to make a show, and that is all.
Goblins, Old Play, X. 143.
Edmund Riche, called of Pontigny, Archbishop of Canterbury. After his death he was canonized by Pope Innocent V., and his day in the calendar, 16 Nov., was formerly kept as a “gaudy” by the members of the hall.—Oxford Guide, Ed. 1847, p. 121.
2. An entertainment; a treat; a spree.
Cut lectures, go to chapel as little as possible, dine in hall seldom more than once a week, give Gaudies and spreads.—Gradus ad Cantab., p. 122.
GENTLEMAN-COMMONER. The highest class of Commoners at Oxford University. Equivalent to a Cambridge Fellow-Commoner.
Gentlemen Commoners “are eldest sons, or only sons, or men already in possession of estates, or else (which is as common a case as all the rest put together), they are the heirs of newly acquired wealth,—sons of the nouveaux riches”; they enjoy a privilege as regards the choice of rooms; associate at meals with the Fellows and other authorities of the College; are the possessors of two gowns, “an undress for the morning, and a full dress-gown for the evening,” both of which are made of silk, the latter being very elaborately ornamented; wear a cap, covered with velvet instead of cloth; pay double caution money, at entrance, viz. fifty guineas, and are charged twenty guineas a year for tutorage, twice the amount of the usual fee.—Compiled from De Quincey’s Life and Manners, pp. 278-280.
GET UP A SUBJECT. See SUBJECT.
This was the fourth time I had begun Algebra, and essayed with no weakness of purpose to get it up properly.—Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 157.
GILL. The projecting parts of a standing collar are, from their situation, sometimes denominated gills.
But, O, what rage his maddening bosom fills!
Far worse than dust-soiled coat are ruined “gills.”
Poem before the Class of 1828, Harv. Coll., by J.C.
Richmond, p. 6.
GOBBLE. At Yale College, to seize; to lay hold of; to appropriate; nearly the same as to collar, q.v.
Alas! how dearly for the fun they paid,
Whom the Proffs gobbled, and the Tutors too.
The Gallinipper, Dec. 1849.
I never gobbled one poor flat,
To cheer me with his soft dark eye, &c.
Yale Tomahawk, Nov. 1849.
I went and performed, and got through the burning,
But oh! and alas! I was gobbled returning.
Yale Banger, Nov. 1850.
Upon that night, in the broad street, was I by one of the brain-deficient men gobbled.—Yale Battery, Feb. 1850.
Then shout for the hero who gobbles the prize.
Songs of Yale, 1853, p. 39.
At Cambridge, Eng., this word is used in the phrase gobbling Greek, i.e. studying or speaking that tongue.
Ambitious to “gobble” his Greek in the haute monde.—Alma
Mater, Vol. I. p. 79.
It was now ten o’clock, and up stairs we therefore flew to gobble Greek with Professor ——.—Ibid., Vol. I. p. 127.
You may have seen him, traversing the grass-plots, “gobbling Greek” to himself.—Ibid., Vol. I. p. 210.
GOLGOTHA. The place of a skull. At Cambridge, Eng., in the University Church, “a particular part,” says the Westminster Review, “is appropriated to the heads of the houses, and is called Golgotha therefrom, a name which the appearance of its occupants renders peculiarly fitting, independent of the pun.”—Am. ed., Vol. XXXV. p. 236.
GONUS. A stupid fellow.
He was a gonus; perhaps, though, you don’t know what gonus means. One day I heard a Senior call a fellow a gonus. “A what?” said I. “A great gonus,” repeated he. “Gonus,” echoed I, “what’s that mean?” “O,” said he, “you’re a Freshman and don’t understand.” A stupid fellow, a dolt, a boot-jack, an ignoramus, is called here a gonus. “All Freshmen,” continued he gravely, “are gonuses.”—The Dartmouth, Vol. IV. p. 116.
If the disquisitionist should ever reform his habits, and turn his really brilliant talents to some good account, then future gonuses will swear by his name, and quote him in their daily maledictions of the appointment system.—Amherst Indicator, Vol. I. p. 76.
The word goney, with the same meaning, is often used.
“How the goney swallowed it all, didn’t he?” said Mr. Slick, with great glee.—Slick in England, Chap. XXI.
Some on ’em were fools enough to believe the goney; that’s a fact.—Ibid.
GOOD FELLOW. At the University of Vermont, this term is used with a signification directly opposite to that which it usually has. It there designates a soft-brained boy; one who is lacking in intellect, or, as a correspondent observes, “an epithetical fool.”
GOODY. At Harvard College, a woman who has the care of the students’ rooms. The word seems to be an abbreviated form of the word goodwife. It has long been in use, as a low term of civility or sport, and in some cases with the signification of a good old dame; but in the sense above given it is believed to be peculiar to Harvard College. In early times, sweeper was in use instead of goody, and even now at Yale College the word sweep is retained. The words bed-maker at Cambridge, Eng., and gyp at Oxford, express the same idea.
The Rebelliad, an epic poem, opens with an invocation to the Goody, as follows.
Old Goody Muse! on thee I call,
Pro more, (as do poets all,)
To string thy fiddle, wax thy bow,
And scrape a ditty, jig, or so.
Now don’t wax wrathy, but excuse
My calling you old Goody Muse;
Because “Old Goody” is a name
Applied to every college dame.
Aloft in pendent dignity,
Astride her magic broom,
And wrapt in dazzling majesty,
See! see! the Goody come!—p. 11.
Go on, dear Goody! and recite
The direful mishaps of the fight.—Ibid., p. 20.
The Goodies hearing, cease to sweep,
And listen; while the cook-maids weep.—Ibid., p. 47.
The Goody entered with her broom,
To make his bed and sweep his room.—Ibid., p. 73.
On opening the papers left to his care, he found a request that his effects might be bestowed on his friend, the Goody, who had been so attentive to him during his declining hours.—Harvard Register, 1827-28, p. 86.
I was interrupted by a low knock at my door, followed by the entrance of our old Goody, with a bundle of musty papers in her hand, tied round with a soiled red ribbon.—Collegian, 1830, p. 231.
Were there any Goodies when you were in college, father? Perhaps you did not call them by that name. They are nice old ladies (not so very nice, either), who come in every morning, after we have been to prayers, and sweep the rooms, and make the beds, and do all that sort of work. However, they don’t much like their title, I find; for I called one, the other day, Mrs. Goodie, thinking it was her real name, and she was as sulky as she could be.—Harvardiana, Vol. III. p. 76.
Yet these half-emptied bottles shall I take,
And, having purged them of this wicked stuff,
Make a small present unto Goody Bush.
Ibid., Vol. III. p. 257.
Reader! wert ever beset by a dun? ducked by the Goody from thine own window, when “creeping like snail unwillingly” to morning prayers?—Ibid., Vol. IV. p. 274.
The crowd delighted
Saw them, like Goodies, clothed in gowns of satin,
Of silk or cotton.—Childe Harvard, p. 26, 1848.
On the wall hangs a Horse-shoe I found in the street;
’T is the shoe that to-day sets in motion my feet;
Though its charms are all vanished this many a year,
And not even my Goody regards it with fear.
The Horse-Shoe, a Poem, by J.B. Felton, 1849, p. 4.
A very clever elegy on the death of Goody Morse, who “For forty years or more … contrived the while No little dust to raise” in the rooms of the students of Harvard College, is to be found in Harvardiana, Vol. I. p. 233. It was written by Mr. (afterwards Rev.) Benjamin Davis Winslow. In the poem which he read before his class in the University Chapel at Cambridge, July 14, 1835, he referred to her in these lines:
“‘New brooms sweep clean’: ’t was thine, dear Goody Morse,
To prove the musty proverb hath no force,
Since fifty years to vanished centuries crept,
While thy old broom our cloisters duly swept.
All changed but thee! beneath thine aged eye
Whole generations came and flitted by,
Yet saw thee still in office;—e’en reform
Spared thee the pelting of its angry storm.
Rest to thy bones in yonder church-yard laid,
Where thy last bed the village sexton made!”—p. 19.
GORM. From gormandize. At Hamilton College, to eat voraciously.
GOT. In Princeton College, when a student or any one else has been cheated or taken in, it is customary to say, he was got.
GOVERNMENT. In American colleges, the general government is usually vested in a corporation or a board of trustees, whose powers, rights, and duties are established by the respective charters of the colleges over which they are placed. The immediate government of the undergraduates is in the hands of the president, professors, and tutors, who are styled the Government, or the College Government, and more frequently the Faculty, or the College Faculty.—Laws of Univ. at Cam., Mass., 1848, pp. 7, 8. Laws of Yale Coll., 1837, p. 5.
For many years he was the most conspicuous figure among those who constituted what was formerly called “the Government.”—Memorial of John S. Popkin, D.D., p. vii.
[Greek: Kudiste], mighty President!!!
[Greek: Kalomen nun] the Government.—Rebelliad, p. 27.
Did I not jaw the Government,
For cheating more than ten per cent?—Ibid., p. 32.
They shall receive due punishment
From Harvard College Government.—Ibid., p. 44.
The annexed production, printed from a MS. in the author’s handwriting, and in the possession of the editor of this work, is now, it is believed, for the first time presented to the public. The time is 1787; the scene, Harvard College. The poem was “written by John Q. Adams, son of the President, when an undergraduate.”
“A Description of a Government Meeting
“The Government of College met,
And Willard[31] rul’d the stern debate.
The witty Jennison[32] declar’d
As how, he’d been completely scar’d;
Last night, quoth he, as I came home,
I heard a noise in Prescott’s[33] room.
I went and listen’d at the door,
As I had often done before;
I found the Juniors in a high rant,
They call’d the President a tyrant;
And said as how I was a fool,
A long ear’d ass, a sottish mule,
Without the smallest grain of spunk;
So I concluded they were drunk.
At length I knock’d, and Prescott came:
I told him ’t was a burning shame,
That he should give his classmates wine;
And he should pay a heavy fine.
Meanwhile the rest grew so outragious,
Altho’ I boast of being couragious,
I could not help being in a fright,
For one of them put out the light.
I thought ’t was best to come away,
And wait for vengeance ’till this day;
And he’s a fool at any rate
Who’ll fight, when he can RUSTICATE.
When they [had] found that I was gone,
They ran through College up and down;
And I could hear them very plain
Take the Lord’s holy name in vain.
To Wier’s34 chamber they then repair’d,
And there the wine they freely shar’d;
They drank and sung till they were tir’d.
And then they peacefully retir’d.
When this Homeric speech was said,
With drolling tongue and hanging head,
The learned Doctor took his seat,
Thinking he’d done a noble feat.
Quoth Joe,35 the crime is great I own,
Send for the Juniors one by one.
By this almighty wig I swear,
Which with such majesty I wear,
Which in its orbit vast contains
My dignity, my power and brains,
That Wier and Prescott both shall see,
That College boys must not be free.
He spake, and gave the awful nod
Like Homer’s Didonean God,
The College from its centre shook,
And every pipe and wine-glass broke.
“Williams,[36] with countenance humane,
While scarce from laughter could refrain,
Thought that such youthful scenes of mirth
To punishment could not give birth;
Nor could he easily divine
What was the harm of drinking wine.
“But Pearson,[37] with an awful frown,
Full of his article and noun,
Spake thus: by all the parts of speech
Which I so elegantly teach,
By mercy I will never stain
The character which I sustain.
Pray tell me why the laws were made,
If they’re not to be obey’d;
Besides, that Wier I can’t endure,
For he’s a wicked rake, I’m sure.
But whether I am right or not,
I’ll not recede a single jot.
“James[38] saw ’twould be in vain t’ oppose,
And therefore to be silent chose.
“Burr,39 who had little wit or pride,
Preferr’d to take the strongest side.
And Willard soon receiv’d commission
To give a publick admonition.
With pedant strut to prayers he came,
Call’d out the criminals by name;
Obedient to his dire command,
Prescott and Wier before him stand.
The rulers merciful and kind,
With equal grief and wonder find,
That you do drink, and play, and sing,
And make with noise the College ring.
I therefore warn you to beware
Of drinking more than you can bear.
Wine an incentive is to riot,
Disturbance of the publick quiet.
Full well your Tutors know the truth,
For sad experience taught their youth.
Take then this friendly exhortation;
The next offence is RUSTICATION.”
GOWN. A long, loose upper garment or robe, worn by professional men, as divines, lawyers, students, &c., who are called men of the gown, or gownmen. It is made of any kind of cloth, worn over ordinary clothes, and hangs down to the ankles, or nearly so. —Encyc.
From a letter written in the year 1766, by Mr. Holyoke, then President of Harvard College, it would appear that gowns were first worn by the members of that institution about the year 1760. The gown, although worn by the students in the English universities, is now seldom worn in American colleges except on Commencement, Exhibition, or other days of a similar public character.
The students are permitted to wear black gowns, in which they may appear on all public occasions.—Laws Harv. Coll., 1798, p. 37.
Every candidate for a first degree shall wear a black dress and the usual black gown.—Laws Univ. at Cam., Mass., 1848, p. 20.
The performers all wore black gowns with sleeves large enough to hold me in, and shouted and swung their arms, till they looked like so many Methodist ministers just ordained.—Harvardiana, Vol. III. p. 111.
Saw them … clothed in gowns of satin,
Or silk or cotton, black as souls benighted.—
All, save the gowns, was startling, splendid, tragic,
But gowns on men have lost their wonted magic.
Childe Harvard, p. 26.
The door swings open—and—he comes! behold him
Wrapt in his mantling gown, that round him flows
Waving, as Cæsar’s toga did enfold him.—Ibid., p. 36.
On Saturday evenings, Sundays, and Saints’ days, the students wear surplices instead of their gowns, and very innocent and exemplary they look in them.—Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 21.
2. One who wears a gown.
And here, I think, I may properly introduce a very singular gallant, a sort of mongrel between town and gown,—I mean a bibliopola, or (as the vulgar have it) a bookseller.—The Student, Oxf. and Cam., Vol. II. p. 226.
GOWNMAN, GOWNSMAN. One whose professional habit is a gown, as a divine or lawyer, and particularly a member of an English university.—Webster.
The gownman learned.—Pope.
Oft has some fair inquirer bid me say,
What tasks, what sports beguile the gownsman’s day.
The College, in Blackwood’s Mag., May, 1849.
For if townsmen by our influence are so enlightened, what must we gownsmen be ourselves?—The Student, Oxf. and Cam., Vol. I. p. 56.
Nor must it be supposed that the gownsmen are thin, study-worn, consumptive-looking individuals.—Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 5.
See CAP.
GRACE. In English universities, an act, vote, or decree of the government of the institution.—Webster.
“All Graces (as the legislative measures proposed by the Senate are termed) have to be submitted first to the Caput, each member of which has an absolute veto on the grace. If it passes the Caput, it is then publicly recited in both houses, [the regent and non-regent,] and at a subsequent meeting voted on, first in the Non-Regent House, and then in the other. If it passes both, it becomes valid.”—Literary World, Vol. XII. p. 283.
See CAPUT SENATUS.
GRADUATE. To honor with a degree or diploma, in a college or university; to confer a degree on; as, to graduate a master of arts.—Wotton.
Graduated a doctor, and dubb’d a knight.—Carew.
Pickering, in his Vocabulary, says of the word graduate: “Johnson has it as a verb active only. But an English friend observes, that ‘the active sense of this word is rare in England.’ I have met with one instance in an English publication where it is used in a dialogue, in the following manner: ‘You, methinks, are graduated.’ See a review in the British Critic, Vol. XXXIV. p. 538.”
In Mr. Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, this word is given as a verb intransitive also: “To take an academical degree; to become a graduate; as he graduated at Oxford.”
In America, the use of the phrase he was graduated, instead of he graduated, which has been of late so common, “is merely,” says Mr. Bartlett in his Dictionary of Americanisms, “a return to former practice, the verb being originally active transitive.”
He was graduated with the esteem of the government, and the regard of his contemporaries—Works of R.T. Paine, p. xxix. The latter, who was graduated thirteen years after.—Peirce’s Hist. Harv. Univ., p. 219.
In this perplexity the President had resolved “to yield to the torrent, and graduate Hartshorn.”—Quincy’s Hist. Harv. Univ., Vol. I. p. 398. (The quotation was written in 1737.)
In May, 1749, three gentlemen who had sons about to be graduated.—Ibid., Vol. II. p. 92.
Mr. Peirce was born in September, 1778; and, after being graduated at Harvard College, with the highest honors of his class.—Ibid., Vol. II. p. 390, and Chap. XXXVII. passim.
He was graduated in 1789 with distinguished honors, at the age of nineteen.—Mr. Young’s Discourse on the Life of President Kirkland.
His class when graduated, in 1785, consisted of thirty-two persons.—Dr. Palfrey’s Discourse on the Life and Character of Dr. Ware.
2. Intransitively. To receive a degree from a college or university.
He graduated at Leyden in 1691.—London Monthly Mag., Oct. 1808, p. 224.
Wherever Magnol graduated.—Rees’s Cyclopædia, Art. MAGNOL.
GRADUATE. One who has received a degree in a college or university, or from some professional incorporated society.—Webster.
GRADUATE IN A SCHOOL. A degree given, in the University of Virginia, to those who have been through a course of study less than is required for the degree of B.A.
GRADUATION. The act of conferring or receiving academical degrees. —Charter of Dartmouth College.
After his graduation at Yale College, in 1744, he continued his studies at Harvard University, where he took his second degree in 1747.—Hist. Sketch of Columbia Coll., p. 122.
Bachelors were called Senior, Middle, or Junior Bachelors according to the year since graduation, and before taking the degree of Master.—Woolsey’s Hist. Disc., p. 122.
GRAND COMPOUNDER. At the English Universities, one who pays double fees for his degree.
“Candidates for all degrees, who possess certain property,” says the Oxford University Calendar, “must go out, as it is termed, Grand Compounders. The property required for this purpose may arise from two distinct sources; either from some ecclesiastical benefice or benefices, or else from some other revenue, civil or ecclesiastical. The ratio of computation in the first case is expressly limited by statute to the value of the benefice or benefices, as rated in the King’s books, without regard to the actual estimation at the present period; and the amount of that value must not be less than forty pounds. In the second instance, which includes all other cases, comprising ecclesiastical as well as civil income, (academical income alone excepted,) property to the extent of three hundred pounds a year is required; nor is any difference made between property in land and property in money, so that a legal revenue to this extent of any description, not arising from a benefice or benefices, and not being strictly academical, renders the qualification complete.”—Ed. 1832, p. 92.
At Oxford “a ‘grand compounder’ is one who has income to the amount of $1,500, and is made to pay $150 for his degree, while the ordinary fee is $42.” Lit. World, Vol. XII. p. 247.
GRAND TRIBUNAL. The Grand Tribunal is an institution peculiar to Trinity College, Hartford. A correspondent describes it as follows. “The Grand Tribunal is a mock court composed of the Senior and Junior Classes, and has for its special object the regulation and discipline of Sophomores. The first officer of the Tribunal is the ‘Grand High Chancellor,’ who presides at all business meetings. The Tribunal has its judges, advocates, sheriff, and his aids. According to the laws of the Tribunal, no Sophomore can be tried who has three votes in his favor. This regulation makes a trial a difficult matter; there is rarely more than one trial a year, and sometimes two years elapse without there being a session of the court. When a selection of an offending and unlucky Soph has been made, he is arrested some time during the day of the evening on which his trial takes place. The court provides him with one advocate, while he has the privilege of choosing another. These trials are often the scenes of considerable wit and eloquence. One of the most famous of them was held in 1853. When the Tribunal is in session, it is customary for the Faculty of the College to act as its police, by preserving order amongst the Sophs, who generally assemble at the door, to disturb, if possible, the proceedings of the Court.”
GRANTA. The name by which the University of Cambridge, Eng., was formerly known. At present it is sometimes designated by this title in poetry, and in addresses written in other tongues than the vernacular.
Warm with fond hope, and Learning’s sacred flame,
To Granta’s bowers the youthful Poet came.
Lines in Memory of H.K. White, by Prof. William Smyth, in
Cam. Guide.
GRATULATORY. Expressing gratulation; congratulatory.
At Harvard College, while Wadsworth was President, in the early part of the last century, it was customary to close the exercises of Commencement day with a gratulatory oration, pronounced by one of the candidates for a degree. This has now given place to what is generally called the valedictory oration.
GRAVEL DAY. The following account of this day is given in a work entitled Sketches of Williams College. “On the second Monday of the first term in the year, if the weather be at all favorable, it has been customary from time immemorial to hold a college meeting, and petition the President for ‘Gravel day.’ We did so this morning. The day was granted, and, recitations being dispensed with, the students turned out en masse to re-gravel the college walks. The gravel which we obtain here is of such a nature that it packs down very closely, and renders the walks as hard and smooth as a pavement. The Faculty grant this day for the purpose of fostering in the students the habit of physical labor and exercise, so essential to vigorous mental exertion.”—1847, pp. 78, 79.
The improved method of observing this day is noted in the annexed extract. “Nearly every college has its own peculiar customs, which have been transmitted from far antiquity; but Williams has perhaps less than any other. Among ours are ‘gravel day,’ ‘chip day,’ and ‘mountain day,’ occurring one in each of the three terms. The first usually comes in the early part of the Fall term. In old times, when the students were few, and rather fonder of work than at the present, they turned out with spades, hoes, and other implements, and spread gravel over the walks, to the College grounds; but in later days, they have preferred to tax themselves to a small amount and delegate the work to others, while they spend the day in visiting the Cascade, the Natural Bridge, or others of the numerous places of interest near us.”—Boston Daily Evening Traveller, July 12, 1854.
GREAT GO. In the English universities the final and most important examination is called the great go, in contradistinction to the little go, an examination about the middle of the course.
In my way back I stepped into the Great Go schools.—The
Etonian, Vol. II. p. 287.
Read through the whole five volumes folio, Latin, previous to going up for his Great Go.—Ibid., Vol. II. p. 381.
GREEN. Inexperienced, unsophisticated, verdant. Among collegians this term is the favorite appellation for Freshmen.
When a man is called verdant or green, it means that he is unsophisticated and raw. For instance, when a man rushes to chapel in the morning at the ringing of the first bell, it is called green. At least, we were, for it. This greenness, we would remark, is not, like the verdure in the vision of the poet, necessarily perennial.—Williams Monthly Miscellany, 1845, Vol. I. p. 463.
GRIND. An exaction; an oppressive action. Students speak of a very long lesson which they are required to learn, or of any thing which it is very unpleasant or difficult to perform, as a grind. This meaning is derived from the verb to grind, in the sense of to harass, to afflict; as, to grind the faces of the poor (Isaiah iii. 15).
I must say ’t is a grind, though
—(perchance I spoke too loud).
Poem before Iadma, 1850, p. 12.
GRINDING. Hard study; diligent application.
The successful candidate enjoys especial and excessive grinding during the four years of his college course. Burlesque Catalogue, Yale Coll., 1852-53, p. 28.
GROATS. At the English universities, “nine groats” says Grose, in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, “are deposited in the hands of an academic officer by every person standing for a degree, which, if the depositor obtains with honor, are returned to him.”
To save his groats; to come off handsomely.—Gradus ad Cantab.
GROUP. A crowd or throng; a number collected without any regular form or arrangement. At Harvard College, students are not allowed to assemble in groups, as is seen by the following extract from the laws. Three persons together are considered as a group.
Collecting in groups round the doors of the College buildings, or in the yard, shall be considered a violation of decorum.—Laws Univ. at Cam., Mass., 1848, Suppl., p. 4.
GROUPING. Collecting together.
It will surely be incomprehensible to most students how so large a number as six could be suffered with impunity to horde themselves together within the limits of the college yard. In those days the very learned laws about grouping were not in existence. A collection of two was not then considered a sure prognostic of rebellion, and spied out vigilantly by tutoric eyes. A group of three was not reckoned a gross outrage of the college peace, and punished severely by the subtraction of some dozens from the numerical rank of the unfortunate youth engaged in so high a misdemeanor. A congregation of four was not esteemed an open, avowed contempt of the laws of decency and propriety, prophesying utter combustion, desolation, and destruction to all buildings and trees in the neighborhood; and lastly, a multitude of five, though watched with a little jealousy, was not called an intolerable, unparalleled violation of everything approaching the name of order, absolute, downright shamelessness, worthy capital mark-punishment, alias the loss of 87-3/4 digits!—Harvardiana, Vol. III. p. 314.
The above passage and the following are both evidently of a satirical nature.
And often grouping on the chains, he hums his own sweet verse,
Till Tutor ——, coming up, commands him to disperse!
Poem before Y.H., 1849, p. 14.
GRUB. A hard student. Used at Williams College, and synonymous with DIG at other colleges. A correspondent says, writing from Williams: “Our real delvers, midnight students, are familiarly called Grubs. This is a very expressive name.”
A man must not be ashamed to be called a grub in college, if he would shine in the world.—Sketches of Williams College, p. 76.
Some there are who, though never known to read or study, are ever ready to debate,—not “grubs” or “reading men,” only “wordy men.”—Williams Quarterly, Vol. II. p. 246.
GRUB. To study hard; to be what is denominated a grub, or hard student. “The primary sense,” says Dr. Webster, “is probably to rub, to rake, scrape, or scratch, as wild animals dig by scratching.”
I can grub out a lesson in Latin or mathematics as well as the best of them.—Amherst Indicator, Vol. I. p. 223.
GUARDING. “The custom of guarding Freshmen,” says a correspondent from Dartmouth College, “is comparatively a late one. Persons masked would go into another’s room at night, and oblige him to do anything they commanded him, as to get under his bed, sit with his feet in a pail of water,” &c.
GULF. In the University of Cambridge, Eng., one who obtains the degree of B.A., but has not his name inserted in the Calendar, is said to be in the gulf.
He now begins to … be anxious about … that classical acquaintance who is in danger of the gulf.—Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 95.
Some ten or fifteen men just on the line, not bad enough to be plucked or good enough to be placed, are put into the “gulf,” as it is popularly called (the Examiners’ phrase is “Degrees allowed”), and have their degrees given them, but are not printed in the Calendar.—Ibid., p. 205.
GULFING. In the University of Cambridge, England, “those candidates for B.A. who, but for sickness or some other sufficient cause, might have obtained an honor, have their degree given them without examination, and thus avoid having their names inserted in the lists. This is called Gulfing.” A degree taken in this manner is called “an Ægrotat Degree.”—Alma Mater, Vol. II. pp. 60, 105.
I discovered that my name was nowhere to be found,—that I was Gulfed.—Ibid., Vol. II. p. 97.
GUM. A trick; a deception. In use at Dartmouth College.
Gum is another word they have here. It means something like chaw. To say, “It’s all a gum,” or “a regular chaw,” is the same thing.—The Dartmouth, Vol. IV. p. 117.
GUM. At the University of Vermont, to cheat in recitation by using ponies, interliners, &c.; e.g. “he gummed in geometry.”
2. To cheat; to deceive. Not confined to college.
He was speaking of the “moon hoax” which “gummed” so many learned philosophers.—Yale Lit. Mag., Vol. XIV. p. 189.
GUMMATION. A trick; raillery.
Our reception to college ground was by no means the most hospitable, considering our unacquaintance with the manners of the place, for, as poor “Fresh,” we soon found ourselves subject to all manner of sly tricks and “gummations” from our predecessors, the Sophs.—A Tour through College, Boston, 1832, p. 13.
GYP. A cant term for a servant at Cambridge, England, at scout is used at Oxford. Said to be a sportive application of [Greek: gyps], a vulture.—Smart.
The word Gyp very properly characterizes them.—Gradus ad
Cantab., p. 56.
And many a yawning gyp comes slipshod in,
To wake his master ere the bells begin.
The College, in Blackwood’s Mag., May, 1849.
The Freshman, when once safe through his examination, is first inducted into his rooms by a gyp, usually recommended to him by his tutor. The gyp (from [Greek: gyps], vulture, evidently a nickname at first, but now the only name applied to this class of persons) is a college servant, who attends upon a number of students, sometimes as many as twenty, calls them in the morning, brushes their clothes, carries for them parcels and the queerly twisted notes they are continually writing to one another, waits at their parties, and so on. Cleaning their boots is not in his branch of the profession; there is a regular brigade of college shoeblacks.—Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 14.
It is sometimes spelled Jip, though probably by mistake.
My Jip brought one in this morning; faith! and told me I was focussed.—Gent. Mag., 1794, p. 1085.