PLUCKED. A cant term at the English universities, applied to those who, for want of scholarship, are refused their testimonials for a degree.—­Oxford Guide.

Who had at length scrambled through the pales and discipline of the Senate-House without being plucked, and miraculously obtained the title of A.B.—­Gent.  Mag., 1795, p. 19.

O what a misery is it to be plucked!  Not long since, an undergraduate was driven mad by it, and committed suicide.—­The term itself is contemptible:  it is associated with the meanest, the most stupid and spiritless animals of creation.  When we hear of a man being plucked, we think he is necessarily a goose.—­Collegian’s Guide, p. 288.

  Poor Lentulus, twice plucked, some happy day
  Just shuffles through, and dubs himself B.A.
    The College, in Blackwood’s Mag., May, 1849.

POKER.  At Oxford, Eng., a cant name for a bedel.

If the visitor see an unusual “state” walking about, in shape of an individual preceded by a quantity of pokers, or, which is the same thing, men, that is bedels, carrying maces, jocularly called pokers, he may be sure that that individual is the Vice-Chancellor. Oxford Guide, 1847, p. xii.

POLE.  At Princeton and Union Colleges, to study hard, e.g. to pole out the lesson.  To pole on a composition, to take pains with it.

POLER.  One who studies hard; a close student.  As a boat is impelled with poles, so is the student by poling, and it is perhaps from this analogy that the word poler is applied to a diligent student.

POLING.  Close application to study; diligent attention to the specified pursuits of college.

A writer defines poling, “wasting the midnight oil in company with a wine-bottle, box of cigars, a ‘deck of eucre,’ and three kindred spirits,” thus leaving its real meaning to be deduced from its opposite.—­Sophomore Independent, Union College, Nov., 1854.

POLL.  Abbreviated from POLLOI.

Several declared that they would go out in “the Poll” (among the [Greek:  polloi], those not candidates for honors).—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 62.

At Cambridge, those candidates for a degree who do not aspire to honors are said to go out in the poll; this being the abbreviated term to denote those who were classically designated [Greek:  hoi polloi].—­The English Universities and their Reforms, in Blackwood’s Magazine, Feb. 1849.