APPOINTEE.  One who receives an appointment at a college exhibition or commencement.

The appointees are writing their pieces.—­Scenes and Characters in College, New Haven, 1847, p. 193.

To the gratified appointee,—­if his ambition for the honor has the intensity it has in some bosoms,—­the day is the proudest he will ever see.—­Ibid., p. 194.

I suspect that a man in the first class of the “Poll” has usually read mathematics to more profit than many of the “appointees,” even of the “oration men” at Yale.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 382.

He hears it said all about him that the College appointees are for the most part poor dull fellows.—­Ibid., p. 389.

APPOINTMENT.  In many American colleges, students to whom are assigned a part in the exercises of an exhibition or commencement, are said to receive an appointment.  Appointments are given as a reward for superiority in scholarship.

As it regards college, the object of appointments is to incite to study, and promote good scholarship.—­Scenes and Characters in College, New Haven, 1847, p. 69.

  If e’er ye would take an “appointment” young man,
  Beware o’ the “blade” and “fine fellow,” young man!
    Yale Lit.  Mag., Vol.  XV. p. 210.

  Some have crammed for appointments, and some for degrees.
    Presentation Day Songs, Yale Coll., June 14, 1854.

See JUNIOR APPOINTMENTS.

APPROBAMUS.  Latin; we approve.  A certificate, given to a student, testifying of his fitness for the performance of certain duties.

In an account of the exercises at Dartmouth College during the Commencement season in 1774, Dr. Belknap makes use of this word in the following connection:  “I attended, with several others, the examination of Joseph Johnson, an Indian, educated in this school, who, with the rest of the New England Indians, are about moving up into the country of the Six Nations, where they have a tract of land fifteen miles square given them.  He appeared to be an ingenious, sensible, serious young man; and we gave him an approbamus, of which there is a copy on the next page.  After which, at three P.M., he preached in the college hall, and a collection of twenty-seven dollars and a half was made for him.  The auditors were agreeably entertained.

“The approbamus is as follows.”—­Life of Jeremy Belknap, D.D., pp. 71, 72.

APPROBATE.  To express approbation of; to manifest a liking, or degree of satisfaction.—­Webster.

The cause of this battle every man did allow and approbate.—­Hall, Henry VII., Richardson’s Dict.