Here’s how it was used in John Florio’s 1598 Italian-English bilingual dictionary: It was initially used to refer to new members of a religious order, a near-synonym of novice and proselyte. Thomas Dekker, The belman of London, 1608įreshman is a compound word that goes back to the 15th century in English. He starts with freshman, a word that had been used already for decades to mean “first-year student”:īrother Begger (quoth he) because thou art yet but a mere freshman in our Colledge, i charge thee to hang thine eares to my lips, and to learne the orders of our house.
Under the heading “The several degrees of persons in the University Colledges,” Holme lists the sophisters (students were also known as commoners) in order:Ĭommoners, are such as are at the University Commons, which till they come to some Degree or Preferment there, are distinguished according to their time of being there as 1.
The detailed treatise remarks on everything from the meanings of colors in coats of arms to how much heralds should be paid at ceremonies to the appropriate robes of the clergy. For a group of words that comes from the Greek sophistēs, meaning “wise man” or “expert,” these terms collectively express the idea of a very imperfect wisdom.Ī listing of what students were called in early modern England is provided in Randle Holme’s 1688 An Academy of Armory, an authoritative guide to 17th-century society. Indeed, sophister was also used to designate someone who used fallacious reasoning in this sense they were sometimes called sophists and the exercise of deceptive reasoning became known as sophistry. In the 16th century it was often modified with unflattering terms:īecause the word seems to have been used to name those equipped with either wisdom or the lack thereof, it was an apt designation for those in the process of intellectual growth and change: undergraduates. Sophister was used as a synonym of philosopher, but also frequently referred to young and not-yet-wise people whose reasoning was immature. Since the goal of education has always been wisdom, and much of the reading and writing at Cambridge and Oxford was in Greek and Latin, it’s not surprising that a word with classical roots was used to designate students at the oldest universities in England: sophister.
0 kommentar(er)
