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MCM
PREFACE
It has been a matter of note and, maybe, of surprise that no attempt has hitherto been made to gather in one volume the numerous Words, Phrases, and Turns of Expression peculiar to Our Great Public Schools. Bare lists of a dozen or more examples may be found in certain (mostly out-of-date) Records and Histories; but taking the Schools individually, only in one instance—Winchester—has there been anything but the most perfunctory attention given to the subject; and in no case has the question received that analytical, scientific treatment—historically and comparatively—which has proved so invaluable in the “Oxford Dictionary” and in “Slang and its Analogues.”
It would, however, seem almost necessary to emphasise the fact that this Word-Book is not, per se, a dictionary of school slang. On the contrary, it is far more than that. For, though such colloquialisms as are peculiar to Public School life are naturally and rightly included, yet by far the larger number of the examples here set down do not, by any accepted method of classification, fall within that category. I am led to make this clear at the outset by reason of a somewhat curious, but altogether erroneous idea that the present book was to be a mere reprint of extracts from the larger work on which, for many years, I have been engaged. That is not so.
Nor, moreover, do these words and phrases appear, save in very few instances, in any other work—not even in so admirably complete a dictionary, in other respects, as “The Century,” while the monumental Oxford undertaking will not be available, as a complete authority, for many years to come.
Having thus stated what this work is not, it seems borne on me to explain, anew, what it is, or rather, what has been my method. Briefly put, my idea has been to collect such words, phrases, names, and allusions to customs as now are, or have been, peculiar to English Public School life, and to apply to their definition and elucidation what is known as the “historical” method, illustrating such examples as lent themselves to it by quotations from old and present-day writers.