“Cues and cees,” says Nares, “are generally mentioned together, the cee meaning a small measure of beer; but why, is not equally explained.”  From certain passages in which they are used interchangeably, the terms do not seem to have been well defined.

Hee [the college butler] domineers over freshmen, when they first come to the hatch, and puzzles them with strange language of cues and cees, and some broken Latin, which he has learnt at his bin.—­Earle’s Micro-cosmographie, (1628,) Char. 17.

The word cue was formerly used at Harvard College.  Dr. Holyoke, who graduated in 1746, says, the “breakfast was two sizings of bread and a cue of beer.”  Judge Wingate, who graduated thirteen years after, says:  “We were allowed at dinner a cue of beer, which was a half-pint.”

It is amusing to see, term after term, and year after year, the formal votes, passed by this venerable body of seven ruling and teaching elders, regulating the price at which a cue (a half-pint) of cider, or a sizing (ration) of bread, or beef, might be sold to the student by the butler.—­Eliot’s Sketch of Hist.  Harv.  Coll., p. 70.

CUP.  Among the English Cantabs, “an odious mixture ... compounded of spice and cider.”—­Westminster Rev., Am. ed., Vol.  XXXV. p. 239.

CURL.  In the University of Virginia, to make a perfect recitation; to overwhelm a Professor with student learning.

CUT.  To be absent from; to neglect.  Thus, a person is said to “cut prayers,” to “cut lecture,” &c.  Also, to “cut Greek” or “Latin”; i.e. to be absent from the Greek or Latin recitation.  Another use of the word is, when one says, “I cut Dr. B——­, or Prof.  C——­, this morning,” meaning that he was absent from their exercises.

Prepare to cut recitations, cut prayers, cut lectures,—­ay, to cut even the President himself.—­Oration before H.L. of I.O. of O.F. 1848.

Next morn he cuts his maiden prayer, to his last night’s text abiding.—­Poem before Y.H. of Harv.  Coll., 1849.

  As soon as we were Seniors,
    We cut the morning prayers,
  We showed the Freshmen to the door,
    And helped them down the stairs.
    Presentation Day Songs, June 15, 1854.

We speak not of individuals but of majorities, not of him whose ambition is to “cut” prayers and recitations so far as possible. —­Williams Quarterly, Vol.  II. p. 15.

The two rudimentary lectures which he was at first forced to attend, are now pressed less earnestly upon his notice.  In fact, he can almost entirely “cut” them, if he likes, and does cut them accordingly, as a waste of time,—­Household Words, Vol.  II. p. 160.

To cut dead, in student use, to neglect entirely.