Obs. [f. L. famul-us + -IST.
The genuineness of this word is very doubtful. In the Latin registers of Oxford colleges, the designation famulus appended to a name meant sometimes one of the college servants (who used to be regularly matriculated) and sometimes a poor student who entered college as a servant to another undergraduate. Most probably famulist is merely a blunder for this word; but it may possibly have been jocularly current as an anglicized form of it.]
1818. Todd, s.v. Famulate, The word Famulist is in use at Queen’s College in Oxford for an inferior member of it.
1846. in Worcester; and in some later Dicts.
