The owner of the apartment attired in a very old dressing-gown and slippers, half buried in an arm-chair, and looking what some young ladies call interesting, i.e. pale and seedy.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 151.

You will seldom find anything very seedy set for
Iambics.—­Ibid., p. 182.

SELL.  An unexpected reply; a deception or trick.

In the Literary World, March 15, 1851, is the following explanation of this word:  “Mr. Phillips’s first introduction to Curran was made the occasion of a mystification, or practical joke, in which Irish wits have excelled since the time of Dean Swift, who was wont (vide his letters to Stella) to call these jocose tricks ‘a sell,’ from selling a bargain.”  The word bargain, however, which Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines “an unexpected reply tending to obscenity,” was formerly used more generally among the English wits.  The noun sell has of late been revived in this country, and is used to a certain extent in New York and Boston, and especially among the students at Cambridge.

  I sought some hope to borrow, by thinking it a “sell”
  By fancying it a fiction, my anguish to dispel.
    Poem before the Iadma of Harv.  Coll., 1850, p. 8.

SELL.  To give an unexpected answer; to deceive; to cheat.

For the love you bear me, never tell how badly I was sold.—­Yale Lit.  Mag., Vol.  XX. p. 94.

The use of this verb is much more common in the United States than that of the noun of the same spelling, which is derived from it; for instance, we frequently read in the newspapers that the Whigs or Democrats have been sold, i.e. defeated in an election, or cheated in some political affair.  The phrase to sell a bargain, which Bailey defines “to put a sham upon one,” is now scarcely ever heard.  It was once a favorite expression with certain English writers.

  Where sold he bargains, Whipstitch?—­Dryden.

  No maid at court is less ashamed,
  Howe’er for selling bargains famed.—­Swift.

Dr. Sheridan, famous for punning, intending to sell a bargain, said, he had made a very good pun.—­Swift, Bons Mots de Stella.

SEMESTER.  Latin, semestris, sex, six, and mensis, month.  In the German universities, a period or term of six months.  The course of instruction occupies six semesters.  Class distinctions depend upon the number of semesters, not of years.  During the first semester, the student is called Fox, in the second Burnt Fox, and then, successively, Young Bursch, Old Bursch, Old House, and Moss-covered Head.