Читать книгу A Collection of College Words and Customs - Benjamin Homer Hall - Страница 9

Indulgent Gods! exclaimed our bloods. The Crayon, Yale Coll., 1823, p. 15.

BLOOD. At some of the Western colleges this word signifies excellent; as, a blood recitation. A student who recites well is said to make a blood.

BLOODEE. In the Farmer's Weekly Museum, formerly printed at Walpole, N.H., appeared August 21, 1797, a poetic production, in which occurred these lines:—

Seniors about to take degrees,

Not by their wits, but by bloodees.

In a note the word bloodee was thus described: "A kind of cudgel worn, or rather borne, by the bloods of a certain college in New England, 2 feet 5 inches in length, and 1–⅞ inch in diameter, with a huge piece of lead at one end, emblematical of its owner. A pretty prop for clumsy travellers on Parnassus."

BLOODY. Formerly a college term for daring, rowdy, impudent.

Arriving at Lord Bibo's study,

They thought they'd be a little bloody; So, with a bold, presumptuous look, An honest pinch of snuff they took. Rebelliad, p. 44.

They roar'd and bawl'd, and were so bloody, As to besiege Lord Bibo's study.

Ibid., p. 76.

BLOW. A merry frolic with drinking; a spree. A person intoxicated is said to be blown, and Mr. Halliwell, in his Dict. Arch. and Prov. Words, has blowboll, a drunkard.

This word was formerly used by students to designate their frolics and social gatherings; at present, it is not much heard, being supplanted by the more common words spree, tight, &c.

My fellow-students had been engaged at a blow till the stagehorn had summoned them to depart.—Harvard Register, 1827–28, p. 172.

No soft adagio from the muse of blows, E'er roused indignant from serene repose. Ibid., p. 233.

And, if no coming blow his thoughts engage, Lights candle and cigar. Ibid., p. 235.

The person who engages in a blow is also called a blow.

I could see, in the long vista of the past, the many hardened blows who had rioted here around the festive board.—Collegian, p. 231.

BLUE. In several American colleges, a student who is very strict in observing the laws, and conscientious in performing his duties, is styled a blue. "Our real delvers, midnight students," says a correspondent from Williams College, "are called blue."

I wouldn't carry a novel into chapel to read, not out of any respect for some people's old-womanish twaddle about the sacredness of the place—but because some of the blues might see you.—Yale Lit. Mag., Vol. XV. p. 81.

Each jolly soul of them, save the blues, Were doffing their coats, vests, pants, and shoes. Yale Gallinipper, Nov. 1848.

None ever knew a sober "blue" In this "blood crowd" of ours. Yale Tomahawk, Nov. 1849.

Lucian called him a blue, and fell back in his chair in a pouting fit.—The Dartmouth, Vol. IV. p. 118.

To acquire popularity, … he must lose his money at bluff and euchre without a sigh, and damn up hill and down the sober church-going man, as an out-and-out blue.—The Parthenon, Union Coll., 1851, p. 6.

BLUE-LIGHT. At the University of Vermont this term is used, writes a correspondent, to designate "a boy who sneaks about college, and reports to the Faculty the short-comings of his fellow-students. A blue-light is occasionally found watching the door of a room where a party of jolly ones are roasting a turkey (which in justice belongs to the nearest farm-house), that he may go to the Faculty with the story, and tell them who the boys are."

BLUES. The name of a party which formerly existed at Dartmouth College. In The Dartmouth, Vol. IV. p. 117, 1842, is the following:—"The students here are divided into two parties—the Rowes and the Blues. The Rowes are very liberal in their notions; the Blues more strict. The Rowes don't pretend to say anything worse of a fellow than to call him a Blue, and vice versa"

See INDIGO and ROWES.

BLUE-SKIN. This word was formerly in use at some American colleges, with the meaning now given to the word BLUE, q.v.

I, with my little colleague here,

Forth issued from my cell,

To see if we could overhear,

Or make some blue-skin tell. The Crayon, Yale Coll., 1823, p. 22.

BOARD. The boards, or college boards, in the English universities, are long wooden tablets on which the names of the members of each college are inscribed, according to seniority, generally hung up in the buttery.—Gradus ad Cantab. Webster.

I gave in my resignation this time without recall, and took my name off the boards.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 291.

Similar to this was the list of students which was formerly kept at Harvard College, and probably at Yale. Judge Wingate, who graduated at the former institution in 1759, writes as follows in reference to this subject:—"The Freshman Class was, in my day at college, usually placed (as it was termed) within six or nine months after their admission. The official notice of this was given by having their names written in a large German text, in a handsome style, and placed in a conspicuous part of the College Buttery, where the names of the four classes of undergraduates were kept suspended until they left College. If a scholar was expelled, his name was taken from its place; or if he was degraded (which was considered the next highest punishment to expulsion), it was moved accordingly."—Peirce's Hist. Harv. Univ., p. 311.

BOGS. Among English Cantabs, a privy.—Gradus ad Cantab.

BOHN. A translation; a pony. The volumes of Bohn's Classical Library are in such general use among undergraduates in American colleges, that Bohn has come to be a common name for a translation.

'Twas plenty of skin with a good deal of Bohn. Songs, Biennial Jubilee, Yale Coll., 1855.

BOLT. An omission of a recitation or lecture. A correspondent from Union College gives the following account of it:—"In West College, where the Sophomores and Freshmen congregate, when there was a famous orator expected, or any unusual spectacle to be witnessed in the city, we would call a 'class meeting,' to consider upon the propriety of asking Professor—— for a bolt. We had our chairman, and the subject being debated, was generally decided in favor of the remission. A committee of good steady fellows were selected, who forthwith waited upon the Professor, and, after urging the matter, commonly returned with the welcome assurance that we could have a bolt from the next recitation."

One writer defines a bolt in these words:—"The promiscuous stampede of a class collectively. Caused generally by a few seconds' tardiness of the Professor, occasionally by finding the lock of the recitation-room door filled with shot."—Sophomore Independent, Union College, Nov. 1854.

The quiet routine of college life had remained for some days undisturbed, even by a single bolt.—Williams Quarterly, Vol. II. p. 192.

BOLT. At Union College, to be absent from a recitation, on the conditions related under the noun BOLT. Followed by from. At Williams College, the word is applied with a different signification. A correspondent writes: "We sometimes bolt from a recitation before the Professor arrives, and the term most strikingly suggests the derivation, as our movements in the case would somewhat resemble a 'streak of lightning,'—a thunder-bolt."

BOLTER. At Union College, one who bolts from a recitation.

2. A correspondent from the same college says: "If a student is unable to answer a question in the class, and declares himself unprepared, he also is a 'bolter.'"

BONFIRE. The making of bonfires, by students, is not an unfrequent occurrence at many of our colleges, and is usually a demonstration of dissatisfaction, or is done merely for the sake of the excitement. It is accounted a high offence, and at Harvard College is prohibited by the following law:—"In case of a bonfire, or unauthorized fireworks or illumination, any students crying fire, sounding an alarm, leaving their rooms, shouting or clapping from the windows, going to the fire or being seen at it, going into the college yard, or assembling on account of such bonfire, shall be deemed aiding and abetting such disorder, and punished accordingly."—Laws, 1848, Bonfires.

A correspondent from Bowdoin College writes: "Bonfires occur regularly twice a year; one on the night preceding the annual State Fast, and the other is built by the Freshmen on the night following the yearly examination. A pole some sixty or seventy feet long is raised, around which brush and tar are heaped to a great height. The construction of the pile occupies from four to five hours."

Not ye, whom midnight cry ne'er urged to run

In search of fire, when fire there had been none;

Unless, perchance, some pump or hay-mound threw

Its bonfire lustre o'er a jolly crew. Harvard Register, p. 233.