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School-life at Winchester College

Chapter 18: NOTE.
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About This Book

A former pupil provides a lively memoir of junior life at a historic boarding college, recounting buildings, officials, and everyday routines. Chapters describe hierarchical roles and duties, domestic arrangements in chambers, meals and hall customs, chapel services, classroom practice and discipline, and outdoor pastimes such as cricket, football, swimming, and excursions. The narrative records slang, nicknames, ceremonies, and practical jokes alongside rules governing fagging, prefects, and punishments, closing with reflections on institutional reforms and a glossary of peculiar words and customs.

NOTE.

Mr. Wrench has recently published a “Dictionary of Winchester Slang,” which has probably had a wide circulation among Wykehamists. He has given a list of all the words he could collect, used in days before my time, and those of more recent coinage. In the following Glossary I have strictly confined myself to those in use while I was in the school. It interested me much to learn from Mr. Wrench’s book, not only the number of quite new words (for instance, the title of his work—“Notions”—was invented subsequent to my period), but also the change in the meaning of several of the words which are still used.