[f. TRENCHER1 + CAP sb.1] A popular name for the academic or college cap, ‘in shape thought to resemble an inverted trencher with a basin upon it’ (Farmer & Henley); a ‘mortar-board.’ Also transf. one who wears a college cap, a collegian: cf. CATERCAP.
1721. Amherst, Terræ Fil., xxxv. (1754), 186. Neither do I find that these trencher-caps are more polite to their own dear countrymen, than they are to foreigners.
1796. Grose’s Dict. Vulg. Tongue (ed. 3), Trencher Cap, the square cap worn by the collegians, at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
1811. Chron., in Ann. Reg., 74/1. His Royal Highness … was covered, during the whole time of his sitting…, by a trencher cap, with a gold tassel.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., i. I walked about two inches taller in my trencher cap after it.
