OAK. In the English universities, the outer door of a student's room.
No man has a right to attack the rooms of one with whom he is not in the habit of intimacy. From ignorance of this axiom I had near got a horse-whipping, and was kicked down stairs for going to a wrong oak, whose tenant was not in the habit of taking jokes of this kind.—The Etonian, Vol. II. p. 287.
A pecker, I must explain, is a heavy pointed hammer for splitting large coals; an instrument often put into requisition to force open an oak (an outer door), when the key of the spring latch happens to be left inside, and the scout has gone away.—The Collegian's Guide, p. 119.
Every set of rooms is provided with an oak or outer door, with a spring lock, of which the master has one latch-key, and the servant another.—Ibid., p. 141.
"To sport oak, or a door," says the Gradus ad Cantabrigiam, "is, in the modern phrase, to exclude duns, or other unpleasant intruders." It generally signifies, however, nothing more than locking or fastening one's door for safety or convenience.
I always "sported my oak" whenever I went out; and if ever I found any article removed from its usual place, I inquired for it; and thus showed I knew where everything was last placed.—Collegian's Guide, p. 141.
If you persist, and say you cannot join them, you must sport your oak, and shut yourself into your room, and all intruders out.—Ibid., p. 340.
Used also in some American colleges.
And little did they dream who knocked hard and often at his oak in vain, &c.—Yale Lit. Mag., Vol. X. p. 47.
OATHS. At Yale College, those who were engaged in the government were formerly required to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration appointed by the Parliament of England. In his Discourse before the Graduates of Yale College, President Woolsey gives the following account of this obligation:—