SCREW. In some American colleges, an excessive, unnecessarily minute, and annoying examination of a student by an instructor is called a screw. The instructor is often designated by the same name.
Haunted by day with fearful screw.
Harvard Lyceum, p. 102.
Screws, duns, and other such like evils.
Rebelliad, p. 77.
One must experience all the stammering and stuttering, the unending doubtings and guessings, to understand fully the power of a mathematical screw.—Harv. Reg., p. 378.
The consequence was, a patient submission to the screw, and a loss of college honors and patronage.—A Tour through College, Boston, 1832, p. 26.
I'll tell him a whopper next time, and astonish him so that he'll forget his screws.—Yale Lit. Mag., Vol. XI. p. 336.
What a darned screw our tutor is.—Ibid.
Apprehension of the severity of the examination, or what in after times, by an academic figure of speech, was called screwing, or a screw, was what excited the chief dread.—Willard's Memories of Youth and Manhood, Vol. I. p. 256.
Passing such an examination is often denominated taking a screw.
And sad it is to take a screw.
Harv. Reg., p. 287.