The successful candidate enjoys especial and excessive grinding during the four years of his college course. Burlesque Catalogue, Yale Coll., 1852-53, p. 28.
GROATS. At the English universities, "nine groats" says Grose, in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, "are deposited in the hands of an academic officer by every person standing for a degree, which, if the depositor obtains with honor, are returned to him."
To save his groats; to come off handsomely.—Gradus ad Cantab.
GROUP. A crowd or throng; a number collected without any regular form or arrangement. At Harvard College, students are not allowed to assemble in groups, as is seen by the following extract from the laws. Three persons together are considered as a group.
Collecting in groups round the doors of the College buildings, or in the yard, shall be considered a violation of decorum.—Laws Univ. at Cam., Mass., 1848, Suppl., p. 4.
GROUPING. Collecting together.
It will surely be incomprehensible to most students how so large a number as six could be suffered with impunity to horde themselves together within the limits of the college yard. In those days the very learned laws about grouping were not in existence. A collection of two was not then considered a sure prognostic of rebellion, and spied out vigilantly by tutoric eyes. A group of three was not reckoned a gross outrage of the college peace, and punished severely by the subtraction of some dozens from the numerical rank of the unfortunate youth engaged in so high a misdemeanor. A congregation of four was not esteemed an open, avowed contempt of the laws of decency and propriety, prophesying utter combustion, desolation, and destruction to all buildings and trees in the neighborhood; and lastly, a multitude of five, though watched with a little jealousy, was not called an intolerable, unparalleled violation of everything approaching the name of order, absolute, downright shamelessness, worthy capital mark-punishment, alias the loss of 87-3/4 digits!—Harvardiana, Vol. III. p. 314.
The above passage and the following are both evidently of a satirical nature.
And often grouping on the chains, he hums his own sweet verse,
Till Tutor ——, coming up, commands him to disperse!
Poem before Y.H., 1849, p. 14.
GRUB. A hard student. Used at Williams College, and synonymous with DIG at other colleges. A correspondent says, writing from Williams: "Our real delvers, midnight students, are familiarly called Grubs. This is a very expressive name."