subs. (colloquial).—A student at Cambridge. [An abbreviation of ‘Cantabrigian.’]

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  1750.  F. COVENTRY, History of Pompey the Little; or, The Life and Adventures of a Lap-dog, II., x. (1785), p. 18, col. 1. The young CANTAB … had come up to London.  [M.]

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  1821.  BYRON, Don Juan, c. iii., st. 126.

          And I grown out of many ‘wooden spoons’
Of verse (the name with which we CANTABS please
To dub the last of honours in degrees).

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