Now when he comes home fuddled, alias Bosky, I shall not be so unmannerly as to say his Lordship ever gets drunk.—The Sizar, cited in Gradus ad Cantab., pp. 20, 21.
BOWEL. At Harvard College, a student in common parlance will express his destitution or poverty by saying, "I have not a bowel." The use of the word with this signification has arisen, probably, from a jocular reference to a quaint Scriptural expression.
BRACKET. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., the result of the final examination in the Senate-House is published in lists signed by the examiners. In these lists the names of those who have been examined are "placed in individual order of merit." When the rank of two or three men is the same, their names are inclosed in brackets.
At the close of the course, and before the examination is concluded, there is made out a new arrangement of the classes called the Brackets. These, in which each is placed according to merit, are hung upon the pillars in the Senate-House.—Alma Mater, Vol. II. p. 93.
As there is no provision in the printed lists for expressing the number of marks by which each man beats the one next below him, and there may be more difference between the twelfth and thirteenth than between the third and twelfth, it has been proposed to extend the use of the brackets (which are now only employed in cases of literal equality between two or three men), and put together six, eight, or ten, whose marks are nearly equal. —Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 227.
BRACKET. In a general sense, to place in a certain order.
I very early in the Sophomore year gave up all thoughts of obtaining high honors, and settled down contentedly among the twelve or fifteen who are bracketed, after the first two or three, as "English Orations."—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 6.
There remained but two, bracketed at the foot of the class.—Ibid., p. 62.
The Trinity man who was bracketed Senior Classic.—Ibid., p. 187.
BRANDER. In the German universities a name given to a student during his second term.