Boner, subs. (general).—A sharp blow on the spine.
Bonner, subs. (Oxford).—A bonfire.
Bonnet. To hold the bonnets, verb. phr. (Royal High School, Edin.: obsolete).—To hold the bonnet or handkerchief used to divide High School boys when fighting.
Bonnet-fire, subs. (Royal High School, Edin.: obsolete).—The process otherwise known as “running the gauntlet.”
1812. Jamieson, Dict. Scottish Language, s.v.
Book, verb (Westminster).—See Pancake, and quot.
1867. Collins, The Public Schools, p. 172. They also claim a right to BOOK the performer (i.e. hurl a shower of books at him) if he fails more than once. This right was liberally exercised in 1865, when the wrath of the school had culminated owing to repeated failures in that and the previous year. The exasperated cook replied to the attack with his only available missile—the frying-pan—and a serious row was the consequence.
Books, subs. (Winchester).—1. The prizes formerly presented by Lord Say and Sele, now given by the governing body, to the “Senior” in each division at the end of “Half.” 2. The school is thus divided:—Sixth Book—Senior and Junior Division; the whole of the rest of the School (but see quotations), is in Fifth Book—Senior Part, Middle Part, Junior Part, each part being divided into so many divisions, Senior, Middle, and Junior, or Senior, 2nd, 3rd, and Junior, as the case may require. Formerly there was also “Fourth Book,” but it ceased to exist about the middle of the Sixties.
c. 1840. Mansfield, School-Life at Winchester College, p. 104. The school was divided into three classes, or BOOKS, as they were called. Of these, the Præfects formed one, Sixth Book; Fifth Book was subdivided into three parts, called respectively “Senior, Middle, and Junior part of the Fifth”; in speaking of them, the words “of the Fifth” were generally omitted. The rest of the boys made up “Fourth Book.”
1867. Collins, The Public Schools, p. 24. The tiers of stone seats, which may still be noticed in the deep recesses of the windows, were the places in which the prefects sat when the boys were arranged in their respective BOOKS; the term still used at Winchester for what in other schools would be called “forms” or “classes.” There were then, as now, four BOOKS only, though the highest was and is numbered as the “sixth.” Then followed the fifth, fourth, and second fourth. The work of the sixth BOOK comprised Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Cicero, Martial, and “Robinson’s Rhetoric.” Ibid., 36. Ninety feet long and thirty-six in breadth, it is sufficiently spacious to allow all the BOOKS to be assembled there without more confusion than is inseparable from the system of teaching so many distinct classes in a single room—an arrangement peculiar to Winchester alone amongst our large Public Schools.