BACHELORSHIP.  The state of one who has taken his first degree in a university or college.—­Webster.

BACK-LESSON.  A lesson which has not been learned or recited; a lesson which has been omitted.

In a moment you may see the yard covered with hurrying groups, some just released from metaphysics or the blackboard, and some just arisen from their beds where they have indulged in the luxury of sleeping over,—­a luxury, however, which is sadly diminished by the anticipated necessity of making up back-lessons.—­Harv.  Reg., p. 202.

BALBUS.  At Yale College, this term is applied to Arnold’s Latin Prose Composition, from the fact of its so frequent occurrence in that work.  If a student wishes to inform his fellow-student that he is engaged on Latin Prose Composition, he says he is studying Balbus.  In the first example of this book, the first sentence reads, “I and Balbus lifted up our hands,” and the name Balbus appears in almost every exercise.

BALL UP.  At Middlebury College, to fail at recitation or examination.

BANDS.  Linen ornaments, worn by professors and clergymen when officiating; also by judges, barristers, &c., in court.  They form a distinguishing mark in the costume of the proctors of the English universities, and at Cambridge, the questionists, on admission to their degrees, are by the statutes obliged to appear in them.—­Grad. ad Cantab.

BANGER.  A club-like cane or stick; a bludgeon.  This word is one of the Yale vocables.

  The Freshman reluctantly turned the key,
  Expecting a Sophomore gang to see,
  Who, with faces masked and bangers stout,
  Had come resolved to smoke him out.
    Yale Lit.  Mag., Vol.  XX. p. 75.

BARBER.  In the English universities, the college barber is often employed by the students to write out or translate the impositions incurred by them.  Those who by this means get rid of their impositions are said to barberize them.

So bad was the hand which poor Jenkinson wrote, that the many impositions which he incurred would have kept him hard at work all day long; so he barberized them, that is, handed them over to the college barber, who had always some poor scholars in his pay.  This practice of barberizing is not uncommon among a certain class of men.—­Collegian’s Guide, p. 155.

BARNEY.  At Harvard College, about the year 1810, this word was used to designate a bad recitation.  To barney was to recite badly.

BARNWELL.  At Cambridge, Eng., a place of resort for characters of bad report.

One of the most “civilized” undertook to banter me on my non-appearance in the classic regions of Barnwell.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 31.

BARRING-OUT SPREE.  At Princeton College, when the students find the North College clear of Tutors, which is about once a year, they bar up the entrance, get access to the bell, and ring it.