A Collection of College Words and Customs, page 489 by Benjamin Homer Hall
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arations required for them are so slight as not to disturb the studies of the hardest reading man, and they take place at a time when no one pretends to do any work."--Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 21.
WIRE. At Harvard College, a trick; an artifice; a stratagem; a dodge.
WIRY. Trickish; artful.
WITENAGEMOTE. Saxon, witan, to know, and gemot, a meeting, a council.
In the University of Oxford, the weekly meeting of the heads of the colleges.--Oxford Guide.
WOODEN SPOON. In the University of Cambridge, Eng., the scholar whose name stands last of all on the printed list of honors, at the Bachelors' Commencement in January, is scoffingly said to gain the wooden spoon. He is also very currently himself called the wooden spoon.
A young academic coming into the country immediately after this great competition, in which he had conspicuously distinguished himself, was asked by a plain country gentleman, "Pray, Sir, is my Jack a Wrangler?" "No, Sir." Now Jack had confidently pledged himself to his uncle that he would take his degree with honor. "A Senior Optime?" "No, Sir." "Why, what was he then?" "Wooden Spoon!" "Best suited to his wooden head," said the mortified inquirer.--Forby's Vocabulary, Vol. II. p. 258.
It may not perhaps be improper to mention one very remarkable personage, I mean "the Wooden Spoon." This luckless wight (for what cause I know not) is annually the universal butt and laughing-stock of the whole Senate-House. He is the last of those young men who take honors, in his year, and is called a Junior Optime; yet, notwithstanding his being in fact superior to them all, the very lowest of the [Greek: oi polloi], or gregarious undistinguished bachelors, think themselves entitled to shoot the pointless arrows of their clumsy wit against the wooden spoon; and to reiterate the stale and perennial remark, that "Wranglers are born with gold spoons in their mouths, Se