sb. and a. [UNDER-2.]
Also formerly written under-graduate and (rarely) under graduate.
A. sb. 1. A student in a university who has not yet taken a degree, and thus is still below the academical standing of a graduate.
1630. Laud, Wks. (1854), V. 29. I think fourteen years is little enough for a bachelor of arts or undergraduate abroad.
a. 1670. Hacket, Abp. Williams, I. (1692), 20. He was an assiduous overseer and interlocutor at the afternoon disputations of the under graduates.
1721. Amherst, Terræ Filius, No. 33. The Thesis pitch’d upon by the excluding doctors for the undergraduates to moralize upon.
1850. Kingsley, A. Locke, I. xiii. 199. They have no influence over the rest of the under-graduates.
1882. Miss Braddon, Mt. Royal, I. i. 18. The traditionary college misdemeanours handed down from generation to generation of undergraduates.
2. fig. One imperfectly instructed, or as yet inexpert (in something).
a. 1659. Osborne, Charac., Wks. (1673), 624. Which is but the single and wild Opinion of some under-graduates in the Arts of Liveing.
1693. Humours Town, 97. Thus far I myself have proceeded (that am yet an Under-graduate) in this admirable Science.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa, VII. lxxviii. 258. Now-and-then flitted in … subordinate sinners, under-graduates, younger than some of the chosen phalanx.
1795. Vancouver, Agric. Essex, 110. Here the under graduates in iniquity commence their career with deer stealing.
1832. Edin. Rev., LVI. 163. That Mr. Johnson … is still an under-graduate in modern German, will … be sufficiently apparent.
1897. P. Warung, Tales Old Régime, 88. The Three who were undergraduates [in crime] muttered assent to the spokesman of the Three graduates.
B. adj. † 1. Of lower degree; of inferior importance. Obs.
1654. H. L’Estrange, Chas. I. (1655), 119. Sir Giles Allington fell also under censure for a sin of grand, though under-graduate abomination. Ibid. (1659), Alliance Div. Off., 437. It is … to be supposed that in this consecration set forms were used, considering withal that they were assigned to under-graduate concernments.
2. Having the standing of an undergraduate; that is an undergraduate. Also fig.
1685. in Roxb. Ball. (1885), V. 602. See here the minor Under-graduate Tool Takes his degree i’ th Doctor’s flogging school.
1687. W. Sherwin, in Magd. Coll. (O.H.S.), 216. There was a Cloth laid in the Hall for the undergraduate Fellow.
3. Of or belonging to an undergraduate; characteristic of undergraduates.
1854. Faber, Growth in Holiness, xix. (1872), 387. There is something undergraduate about this levity.
1889. Gretton, Memory’s Harkb., 241. In my undergraduate days, one Ash Wednesday, there came down … a tornado of the tropics.
4. Consisting of undergraduates.
1868. M. Pattison, Academ. Org., iv. 109. The discipline of the undergraduate body is usually administered by the vice-gerent.
Hence Undergraduatedom, the body of undergraduates.
1893. Westm. Gaz., 1 March, 3/3. He [Rector of Glasgow University] became an absentee, so as to remove the voice of undergraduatedom from the jurisdiction of the University.
