The Public School Word-book / A conribution to to a historical glossary of words phrases and turns of expression obsolete and in current use peculiar to our great public schools together with some that have been or are modish at the universities

by John Stephen Farmer

1698-1700. Ward, Lond. Spy, II. (1706), i. 31. By that time we had sipp’d off our Nipperkin of my Grannums Aqua Mirabilis.

1719. Durfey, Pills to Purge.... Song, Quart-pot, pint-pot, NIPPERKEN, &c.

1785. GROSE, Vulg. Tongue, s.v.

1832. Noctes Ambrosianæ, Sept. William III., who only snoozed over a NIPPERKIN of Schiedam with a few Dutch favourites.

1882. J. Ashton, Social Life in Reign of Q. Anne, i. 197. [Beer] was of different qualities, from the “penny NIPPERKIN of Molassas Ale” to “a pint of Ale cost me five-pence.”

1883. Trollope, What I Remember. It was the duty of the bedmakers to carry every evening into each chamber a huge NIPPERKIN of beer.

Nob, subs. (Oxford: obsolete).—The Fellow of a College. [Probably the original application of the colloquial usage = a person of rank or position; from “nobility.” Cf. Mob, from mobile vulgus.]

1825. English Spy, i. 136. “We must find you some more tractable personage; some good-humoured NOB.”

Noggs, subs. (Harrow).—A hereditary name for Custos’ assistant. [From Dickens: the first owner’s name was Newman—hence Noggs.]

Nomenclature (Harrow).—See Upper School.