See REGENT. SENATE.
NON-TERM. "When any member of the Senate," says the Gradus ad Cantabrigiam, "dies within the University during term, on application to the Vice-Chancellor, the University bell rings an hour; from which period Non-Term, as to public lectures and disputations, commences for three days."
NON VALUI. Latin; literally, I was sick. At Harvard College, when the students were obliged to speak Latin, it was usual for them to give the excuse non valui for almost every absence or omission. The President called upon delinquents for their excuses in the chapel, after morning prayers, and these words were often pronounced so broadly as to sound like non volui, I did not wish [to go]. The quibble was not perceived for a long time, and was heartily enjoyed, as may be well supposed, by those who made use of it.
[Greek: Nous]. Greek; sense. A word adopted by, and in use among, students.
He is a lad of more [Greek: nous], and keeps better company.—Pref. to Grad. ad Cantab.
Getting the better of them in anything which required the smallest exertion of [Greek: nous], was like being first in a donkey-race. —Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 30.
NUMBER FIFTY, NUMBER FORTY-NINE. At Trinity College, Hartford, the privies are known by these names. Jarvis Hall contains forty-eight rooms, and the numbers forty-nine and fifty follow in numerical continuation, but with a different application.
NUMBER TEN. At the Wesleyan University, the names "No. 10, and, as a sort of derivative, No. 1001, are applied to the privy." The former title is used also at the University of Vermont, and at Dartmouth College.
NUTS. A correspondent from Williams College says, "We speak of a person whom we despise as being a nuts." This word is used in the Yorkshire dialect with the meaning of a "silly fellow." Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, remarks: "It is not applied to an idiot, but to one who has been doing a foolish action."