BOOTLICK.  To fawn upon; to court favor.

Scorns the acquaintance of those he deems beneath him; refuses to bootlick men for their votes.—­The Parthenon, Union Coll., Vol.  I. p. 6.

The “Wooden Spoon” exhibition passed off without any such hubbub, except where the pieces were of such a character as to offend the delicacy and modesty of some of those crouching, fawning, bootlicking hypocrites.—­The Gallinipper, Dec. 1849.

BOOTLICKER.  A student who seeks or gains favor from a teacher by flattery or officious civilities; one who curries favor.  A correspondent from Union College writes:  “As you watch the students more closely, you will perhaps find some of them particularly officious towards your teacher, and very apt to linger after recitation to get a clearer knowledge of some passage.  They are Bootlicks, and that is known as Bootlicking; a reproach, I am sorry to say, too indiscriminately applied.”  At Yale, and other colleges, a tutor or any other officer who informs against the students, or acts as a spy upon their conduct, is also called a bootlick.

Three or four bootlickers rise.—­Yale Banger, Oct. 1848.

  The rites of Wooden Spoons we next recite,
  When bootlick hypocrites upraised their might.
    Ibid., Nov. 1849.

Then he arose, and offered himself as a “bootlick” to the Faculty.—­Yale Battery, Feb. 14, 1850.

BOOTS.  At the College of South Carolina it is customary to present the most unpopular member of a class with a pair of handsome red-topped boots, on which is inscribed the word BEAUTY.  They were formerly given to the ugliest person, whence the inscription.

BORE.  A tiresome person or unwelcome visitor, who makes himself obnoxious by his disagreeable manners, or by a repetition of visits.—­Bartlett.

A person or thing that wearies by iteration.—­Webster.

Although the use of this word is very general, yet it is so peculiarly applicable to the many annoyances to which a collegian is subjected, that it has come by adoption to be, to a certain extent, a student term.  One writer classes under this title “text-books generally; the Professor who marks slight mistakes; the familiar young man who calls continually, and when he finds the door fastened demonstrates his verdant curiosity by revealing an inquisitive countenance through the ventilator.”—­Sophomore Independent, Union College, Nov. 1854.

In college parlance, prayers, when the morning is cold or rainy, are a bore; a hard lesson is a bore; a dull lecture or lecturer is a bore; and, par excellence, an unwelcome visitor is a bore of bores.  This latter personage is well described in the following lines:—­