subs. (old university).—The weekly bills of students at Oxford. [Murray: Much depends on the original sense at Oxford: if this was ‘food, provisions,’ it is natural to connect it with ‘battle,’ to feed, or receive nourishment. It appears that the word has apparently undergone progressive extensions of application, owing partly to changes in the external economy of the colleges. Some Oxford men of a previous generation state that it was understood by them to apply to the buttery accounts alone, or even to the provisions ordered from the buttery, as distinct from the ‘commons’ supplied from the kitchen: but this latter use is disavowed by others]. Also as verb, and BATTLER = an Oxford student; formerly used in contradistinction to a gentleman commoner. See BATTLINGS.
1570. P. LEVINS, Manipulus Vocabulorum, 38. [T. L. KINGTON-OLIPHANT, The New English, i. 579. Then BATTLE COMMONS; the terms are still well-known at Oxford].
1607. W. S., The Puritaine [MALONE, Suppt., ii. 543]. Eat my commons with a good stomach, and BATTLE with discretion.
1611. COTGRAVE, Dictionarie [NARES]. TO BATTLE (as scholars do in Oxford), être debiteur au collège pour ses vivres. Mot usé seulement jeunes écoliers de l’université d’Oxford.
1617. MINSHEU, Guide into the Tongues. CUE, halfe a farthing, so called because they set down in the BATTLING or Butterie Bookes in Oxford and Cambridge the letter Q for halfe a farthing, and in Oxford when they make that CUE or Q a farthing, they say Cap my Q, and make it a farthing thus a/Q
1678. E. PHILLIPS, The New World of Words, s.v.
1706. HEARNE; 1733. NORTH; 1744. SALMON; 1791, 1824. D’ISRAELI; 1792. Gentleman’s Magazine; 1824. HEBER; 1824. ARNOLD.
1798. J. H. TOOKE, Ἕπεα πτερόεντα; or, The Diversions of Purley, 390. BATTEL, a term used at Eton for the small portion of food which, in addition to the College allowance, the collegers receive from their dames.
1853. REV. E. BRADLEY (‘Cuthbert Bede’), The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman, II. vii. The Michaelmas term was drawing to its close. Buttery and kitchen books were adding up their sums total; bursars were preparing for BATTELS.
d. 1859. DE QUINCEY, Life and Memoirs, 274. Many men BATTEL at the rate of guinea a week and wealthier men more expensive, and more careless men even BATTELLED much higher.
1886–7. DICKENS, Dictionary of Oxford and Cambridge, 16. BATTELS is properly a designation of the food obtained from the College Buttery. An account of this, and of the account due to the Kitchen, is sent in to every undergraduate weekly, hence these bills also are known as BATTELS, and the name, further, is extended to the total amount of the term’s expenses furnished by the College. In some Colleges it is made essential to the keeping of an undergraduates’ term that he should BATTEL, i.e., obtain food in College on a certain number of days each week.
