A Collection of College Words and Customs, page 149 by Benjamin Homer Hall
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y half that sum, and thus particularly explains it: "Because they set down in the battling or butterie bookes in Oxford and Cambridge, the letter q for half a farthing; and in Oxford when they make that cue or q a farthing, they say, cap my q, and make it a farthing, thus, [Symbol: small q with a line over]. But in Cambridge they use this letter, a little f; thus, f, or thus, s, for a farthing." He translates it in Latin calculus panis. Coles has, "A cue [half a farthing] minutum."--Nares's Glossary.
"A cue of bread," says Halliwell, "is the fourth part of a half-penny crust. A cue of beer, one draught."
J. Woods, under-butler of Christ Church, Oxon, said he would never sitt capping of cues.--Urry's MS. add. to Ray.
You are still at Cambridge with size kue.--Orig. of Dr., III. p. 271.
He never drank above size q of Helicon.--Eachard, Contempt of Cl., p. 26.
"Cues and cees," says Nares, "are generally mentioned together, the cee meaning a small measure of beer; but why, is not equally explained." From certain passages in which they are used interchangeably, the terms do not seem to have been well defined.
Hee [the college butler] domineers over freshmen, when they first come to the hatch, and puzzles them with strange language of cues and cees, and some broken Latin, which he has learnt at his bin.--Earle's Micro-cosmographie, (1628,) Char. 17.
The word cue was formerly used at Harvard College. Dr. Holyoke, who graduated in 1746, says, the "breakfast was two sizings of bread and a cue of beer." Judge Wingate, who graduated thirteen years after, says: "We were allowed at dinner a cue of beer, which was a half-pint."
It is amusing to see, term after term, and year after year, the formal votes, passed by this venerable body of seven ruling and teaching elders, regulating the price at which a