2. At Bowdoin College, an imperfect recitation is called a screw.
You never should look blue, sir,
If you chance to take a "screw," sir,
To us it's nothing new, sir,
To drive dull care away.
The Bowdoin Creed.
We've felt the cruel, torturing screw,
And oft its driver's ire.
Song, Sophomore Supper, Bowdoin Coll., 1850.
SCREW. To press with an excessive and unnecessarily minute examination.
Who would let a tutor knave
_Screw _him like a Guinea slave!
Rebelliad, p. 53.
Have I been screwed, yea, deaded morn and eve,
Some dozen moons of this collegiate life?
Harvardiana, Vol. III. p. 255.
O, I do well remember when in college,
How we fought reason,—battles all in play,—
Under a most portentous man of knowledge,
The captain-general in the bloodless fray;
He was a wise man, and a good man, too,
And robed himself in green whene'er he came to screw.
Our Chronicle of '26, Boston, 1827.
In a note to the last quotation, the author says of the word screw: "For the information of the inexperienced, we explain this as a term quite rife in the universities, and, taken substantively, signifying an intellectual nonplus."
At last the day is ended, The tutor screws no more. Knick. Mag., Vol. XLV. p. 195.
SCREWING UP. The meaning of this phrase, as understood by English Cantabs, may be gathered from the following extract. "A magnificent sofa will be lying close to a door … bored through from top to bottom from the screwing up of some former unpopular tenant; "screwing up" being the process of fastening on the outside, with nails and screws, every door of the hapless wight's apartments. This is done at night, and in the morning the gentleman is leaning three-fourths out of his window, bawling for rescue."—Westminster Rev., Am. Ed., Vol. XXXV. p. 239.