Now U.S. Also 7 sophy moore, 8– sophimore (8 soph mor). [app. f. sophom SOPHISM + -OR. Cf. SOPHUMER.]
1. A student of the second year: † a. At Cambridge. Obs.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. 199/1. The several degrees of persons in the University Colledges…. 1. Fresh Men. 2. Sophy Moores. 3. Junior Soph, or Sophester. And lastly Senior Soph.
1795. Gentl. Mag., Oct., 818. The Freshman’s year being expired, the next distinctive appellation conferred is A Soph Mor.
b. In American universities and colleges. Also transf. (quot. 1807).
α. 1726. in J. Quincy, Hist. Harvard (1840), I. 441. The Sophomores recite Burgersdicius’s Logic … in the mornings and forenoons.
1766. in B. Peirce, Hist. Harvard (1833), 246. That the Sophomores shall attend … on Mondays.
1792. J. Belknap, Hist. New Hampsh., III. 296. The sophomores [at Dartmouth] attend to the languages, geography, logic and mathematics.
1807. W. Irving, Salmagundi (1811), II. 41. Three different orders of shavers in New York—those who shave pigs. N.B. Freshmen and Sophomores.
1826. Motley, Corr. (1889), I. 6. Mr. Cogswell says he should think I might enter Sophomore [at Harvard].
1865. Mrs. Whitney, Gayworthys, I. 243. He would have been nearly through a college year by this time; and he had been ready to enter as sophomore.
1892. Nation (N.Y.), 22 Sept., 216/3. Under this system the ‘academic’ students, i.e., the freshmen and sophomores, work off their required subjects two at a time.
β. c. 1764. Freshman Laws, in Woolsey, Hist. Disc. Yale Coll. (1850), 55. A Senior may take a Freshman from a Sophimore, a Bachelor from a Junior.
1778. Stiles, Diary, 15 July (1901), II. 285. [List of] Sophimores.
1804. Fessenden, Democracy Unveiled (1806), II. 42. With all his sophimore’s rotundity, With all his semblance of profundity.
2. attrib., passing into adj., as sophomore class, society, year, etc.
1778. Stiles, Diary, 25 June (1901), II. 276. Disciplined Cowles & examined & admitted him into the Sophimore Class.
1852. Bristed, Five Yrs. Eng. Univ. (ed. 2), 381. Two prizes for problems during the Freshman and Sophomore years.
1883. W. D. Howells, in Century Mag., XXV. 517/1. Helen was in the sophomore year of the class with which she was dancing through Harvard when Robert came home from his first cruise.
1897. Flandrau, Harvard Episodes, 95. This fact is … of greater significance than any one … is likely to attach to the sophomore society.
