Leeds, March, 1850.
REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES.
Swot is, as the querist supposes, a military cant term, and a sufficiently vulgar one too. It originated at the great slang-manufactory for the army, the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. You may depend upon the following account of it, which I had many years ago from the late Thomas Leybourne, F.R.S., Senior Professor of Mathematics in that college.
One of the Professors, Dr. William Wallace, in addition to his being a Scotchman, had a bald head, and an exceedingly "broad Scotch" accent, besides a not very delicate discrimination in the choice of his English terms relating to social life. It happened on one hot summer's day, nearly half a century ago, that he had been teaching a class, and had worked himself into a considerable effusion from the skin. He took out his handkerchief, rubbed his head and forehead violently, and exclaimed in his Perthshire dialect,—"It maks one swot." This was a God-send to the "gentlemen cadets," wishing to achieve a notoriety as wits and slangsters; and mathematics generally ever after became swot, and mathematicians swots. I have often heard it said:—"I never could do swot well, Sir;" and "these dull fellows, the swots, can talk of nothing but triangles and equations."
I should have thought that the sheer disgustingness of the idea would have shut the word out of the vocabularies of English gentlemen. It remains nevertheless a standard term in the vocabulary of an English soldier. It is well, at all events, that future ages should know its etymology.
T.S.D.
Pokership, (antè, pp. 185. 218. 269. 282. 323, 324.)—I am sorry to see that no progress has yet been made towards a satisfactory explanation of this office. I was in hopes that something better than mere conjecture would have been supplied from the peculiar facilities of "T.R.F." "W.H.C." (p. 323.) has done little more than refer to the same instruments as had been already adverted to by me in p. 269., with the new reading of poulterer for poker! With repect to "T.R.F.'s" conjecture, I should be more ready to accept it if he could produce a single example of the word pawker, in the sense of a hog-warden. The quotation from the Pipe-roll of John is founded on a mistake. The entry occurs in other previous rolls, and is there clearly explained to refer to the porter of Hereford Castle. Thus, in Pipe 2 Hen. II. and 3 Hen. II. we have, under Hereford,
"In liberatione portarii castelli ... 30s. 5d."
In Pipe 1 Ric. I. we have,