SCRAPING.  A drawing of, or the act of drawing, the feet over the floor, as an insult to some one, or merely to cause disturbance; a shuffling of the feet.

New lustre was added to the dignity of their feelings by the pathetic and impressive manner in which they expressed them, which was by stamping and scraping majestically with their feet, when in the presence of the detested tutors.—­Don Quixotes at College, 1807.

The morning and evening daily prayers were, on the next day (Thursday), interrupted by scraping, whistling, groaning, and other disgraceful noises.—­Circular, Harvard College, 1834, p. 9.

This word is used in the universities and colleges of both England and America.

SCREW.  In some American colleges, an excessive, unnecessarily minute, and annoying examination of a student by an instructor is called a screw.  The instructor is often designated by the same name.

  Haunted by day with fearful screw.
    Harvard Lyceum, p. 102.

  Screws, duns, and other such like evils.
    Rebelliad, p. 77.

One must experience all the stammering and stuttering, the unending doubtings and guessings, to understand fully the power of a mathematical screw.—­Harv.  Reg., p. 378.

The consequence was, a patient submission to the screw, and a loss of college honors and patronage.—­A Tour through College, Boston, 1832, p. 26.

I’ll tell him a whopper next time, and astonish him so that he’ll forget his screws.—­Yale Lit.  Mag., Vol.  XI. p. 336.

What a darned screw our tutor is.—­Ibid.

Apprehension of the severity of the examination, or what in after times, by an academic figure of speech, was called screwing, or a screw, was what excited the chief dread.—­Willard’s Memories of Youth and Manhood, Vol.  I. p. 256.

Passing such an examination is often denominated taking a screw.

  And sad it is to take a screw.
    Harv.  Reg., p. 287.

2.  At Bowdoin College, an imperfect recitation is called a screw.

  You never should look blue, sir,
  If you chance to take a “screw,” sir,
  To us it’s nothing new, sir,
    To drive dull care away.
    The Bowdoin Creed.

  We’ve felt the cruel, torturing screw,
    And oft its driver’s ire.
    Song, Sophomore Supper, Bowdoin Coll., 1850.

SCREW.  To press with an excessive and unnecessarily minute examination.

  Who would let a tutor knave
  Screw him like a Guinea slave!
    Rebelliad, p. 53.

  Have I been screwed, yea, deaded morn and eve,
  Some dozen moons of this collegiate life?
    Harvardiana, Vol.  III. p. 255.