A Collection of College Words and Customs

This volume gathers the odd slang, Latin turns, and campus customs that peppered American college life in the 1850s. Compiled by a former senior during his idle months, the original anonymous pamphlet captured the jokes, rituals, and secret phrases of Yale, Harvard and their peers. A modern revised edition adds fresh articles, an institutional index, and scholarly notes, turning a modest collection into a more thorough reference.

Listeners are treated to vivid portraits of student life—secret societies, hazing initiations, and the playful verses students traded in the dorms. Each entry supplies enough background for the archaic terms to resonate today, while occasional anecdotes reveal the camaraderie and rivalry that defined the era. Brief histories of the oldest literary societies anchor the slang in its intellectual setting, making the book both a nostalgic time capsule and a reminder of how language shapes community.