Dee, the famous mathematician, appears to have fagged as intensely as any man at Cambridge. For three years, he declares, he only slept four hours a night, and allowed two hours for refreshment. The remaining eighteen hours were spent in study.—Ibid., p. 48.
How did ye toil, and fagg, and fume, and fret,
And—what the bashful muse would blush to say.
But, now, your painful tremors are all o'er,
Cloath'd in the glories of a full-sleev'd gown,
Ye strut majestically up and down,
And now ye fagg, and now ye fear, no more!
Gent. Mag., 1795, p. 20.
FAG. A laborious drudge; a drudge for another. In colleges and schools, this term is applied to a boy of a lower form who is forced to do menial services for another boy of a higher form or class.
But who are those three by-standers, that have such an air of submission and awe in their countenances? They are fags,—Freshmen, poor fellows, called out of their beds, and shivering with fear in the apprehension of missing morning prayers, to wait upon their lords the Sophomores in their midnight revellings.—Harvardiana, Vol. II. p. 106.
His fag he had well-nigh killed by a blow. Wallenstein in Bohn's Stand. Lib., p. 155.
A sixth-form schoolboy is not a little astonished to find his fags becoming his masters.—Lond. Quar. Rev., Am. Ed., Vol. LXXIII, p. 53.
Under the title FRESHMAN SERVITUDE will be found as account of the manner in which members of that class were formerly treated in the older American colleges.
2. A diligent student, i.e. a dig.
FAG. Time spent in, or period of, studying.
The afternoon's fag is a pretty considerable one, lasting from three till dark.—Alma Mater, Vol. I. p. 248.