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LETTERS
Letters should be sent to letters@trinitynews.ie or to Trinity News, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2. We reserve the right to edit submissions for style and length. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Trinity News.
LETTERS@TRINITYNEWS.IE
PEARSE STREET GATE OPENING TIMES CLARIFIED IN RESPONSE to a letter in the last issue: Access times for all entrances are available on tcd.ie/maps/access-times. php. The gate in question is open between 8am and 10am and between 4pm and 6.30pm, but only on weekdays. The only deviations from these times would be if there was a special event taking place in College, i.e. some events in the Science Gallery when the
Pearse St. Gate (East) closure time may be extended to facilitate exit from the gallery. Other events when the opening/ closing times change such as Trinity Ball, Christmas/New Year closure are flagged well in advance to staff and students. Pat Morey Chief Steward
DEMOCRACIES MUST GET RID OF DEATH PENALTY
Madam -
THIS FORNIGHT IN HISTORY
I WOULD like to express my support for Eoin O’Driscoll’s article ‘Death penalty, in a democracy?’ of 08 October 2011. As a US citizen, I still find it shocking that this practice is still in place and have been campaigning as part of a pressure group to try and get it abolished in every American state. I hope that the incoming Irish President will have some sway in the matter to abolish this archaic practice. Yours, etc. Lucy Donnell Science Graduand
Right: Issue 1, Volume 1 of Trinity News published on Wednesday 28 October 1953 Below: The issue also covered a 6-3 win by Dublin University Football Club over London Irish
Words we don’t use much any more
OLD TRINITY PETER HENRY
D
iarmaid Ó Muirithe’s Irish Times column has led to another book. Words We Don’t Use (Much Anymore) is a curious list of obsolete vocabulary, ancient words driven to extinction by TV, modern media and, as the author says, “education, if that’s what it is”. Ó Muirithe - an MA and MLitt of this university - covers Ireland and further afield in his new book. But Trinity College has many of its own peculiar words, forgotten or scorned by recent generations. Some words have survived thanks to their official use – but only just. You might be a “Junior Freshman” or “Senior Sophister”, but in speech many go with “first year” and “fourth year.” “Michaelmas”, “Hilary” and “Trinity” terms survive, but Americanisms like “second semester” threaten those names in daily conversation. Other words are barely remembered. In the 18th century, “buck” had a well-known meaning around Dublin. The buck was a rowdy, troublemaking Trinity student. The word survives at Buck’s Townhouse on Leeson Street – Buck Whaley was a part of the Trinity students’s boisterous
25 October, 2011
group, although not a Trinity man himself. One completely forgotten word, “colfabias”, I have only encountered in a couple of old slang dictionaries. “Colfabias”, or “colfabis”, was the student’s word for a toilet around 1820. This is apparently a Latinised Irish word, though a Latinisation of what word I cannot tell. Already this term I mentioned the “college skip”. This was Trinity’s own word for a student’s servant, possibly a combination of Oxford and Cambridge’s words for their servants, “scout” and “gyp”. Our skips kept the tools of the job in ground-floor skipperies. Trinity News reported the last of the skips on a front page in November 1962. Here we once - and still do, if you prefer - lived in “rooms” in college. A student would have responded blankly to any use of “on-campus accommodation” before 1970. And the undergraduate’s roommate was called
College, Dublin, has become Trinity College Dublin everywhere now even in the new Statutes. This ugly construction follows the use of UCD and some of the London universities, abandoning our ancient name and using something like a corporate brand. That this idiocy is admitted in the college’s own branding, “Trinity College Dublin” says the logo, but underneath it: “Coláiste na Tríonóide, Baile Átha Cliath.” If they can’t stomach it in Irish, why allow it in English? pehenry@tcd.ie
Above: “Trinity College Porters” in distinctive uniform and cap
Above: Cover of Words We Don’t Use...
his “wife”, a word which may have died when sets began to be shared by three or more people. The “jib” is explained by a TCD: A College Miscellany editorial of November 1953: “Jib is a traditional Trinity word meaning first-year student. It used to be in general use, rather like skip and wife today, but in recent years the Calendar word freshman seems to have driven it out. TCD is an old and backward publication, and persists in calling freshmen jibs.” Sadly, that editorial turned out to be jib’s obituary: it was never used in Trinity News, which began publication that term. Parties in college were called “sprees” in the late 19th century. One piece in Trinity Tales says that around 1970 a party in the Hist was a “blind” and in the Boat Club a “thrash.” “Hop” was also a popular term for a college bash in the 1950s and 1960s.
Trinity’s “porters” were once a part of life here. The word is not special to Trinity - Oxford and Cambridge retain theirs - but it is sad that it has been abandoned in favour of “security guards”, Our porters once had a distinctive uniform and cap, also ditched during less conservative years. The Boat Club has a couple of its own words. Trinity oarswomen are affectionately called “mares” by the men. And the cricket sweater for senior eight also has its own word: the “magpie”. I am told that the “magpie” may reappear this year after a long absence.
W
ords fall out of use. But commas are removed from use by unthinking minimalists. Trinity
Above: The “college skip” and pail