GAUDY.  In the University of Oxford, a feast or festival.  The days on which they occur are called gaudies or gaudy days.  “Blount, in his Glossographia,” says Archdeacon Nares in his Glossary, “speaks of a foolish derivation of the word from a Judge Gaudy, said to have been the institutor of such days.  But such days were held in all times, and did not want a judge to invent them.”

                            Come,

Let’s have one other gaudy night:  call to me
All my sad captains; fill our bowls; once more
Let’s mock the midnight bell.

    Antony and Cleopatra, Act.  III.  Sc. 11.

            A foolish utensil of state,
  Which like old plate upon a gaudy day,
  ’s brought forth to make a show, and that is all.
    Goblins, Old Play, X. 143.

Edmund Riche, called of Pontigny, Archbishop of Canterbury.  After his death he was canonized by Pope Innocent V., and his day in the calendar, 16 Nov., was formerly kept as a “gaudy” by the members of the hall.—­Oxford Guide, Ed. 1847, p. 121.

2.  An entertainment; a treat; a spree.

Cut lectures, go to chapel as little as possible, dine in hall seldom more than once a week, give Gaudies and spreads.—­Gradus ad Cantab., p. 122.

GENTLEMAN-COMMONER.  The highest class of Commoners at Oxford University.  Equivalent to a Cambridge Fellow-Commoner.

Gentlemen Commoners “are eldest sons, or only sons, or men already in possession of estates, or else (which is as common a case as all the rest put together), they are the heirs of newly acquired wealth,—­sons of the nouveaux riches”; they enjoy a privilege as regards the choice of rooms; associate at meals with the Fellows and other authorities of the College; are the possessors of two gowns, “an undress for the morning, and a full dress-gown for the evening,” both of which are made of silk, the latter being very elaborately ornamented; wear a cap, covered with velvet instead of cloth; pay double caution money, at entrance, viz. fifty guineas, and are charged twenty guineas a year for tutorage, twice the amount of the usual fee.—­Compiled from De Quincey’s Life and Manners, pp. 278-280.

GET UP A SUBJECT.  See SUBJECT.

This was the fourth time I had begun Algebra, and essayed with no weakness of purpose to get it up properly.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 157.

GILL.  The projecting parts of a standing collar are, from their situation, sometimes denominated gills.

  But, O, what rage his maddening bosom fills! 
  Far worse than dust-soiled coat are ruined “gills.”
    Poem before the Class of 1828, Harv.  Coll., by J.C. 
    Richmond, p. 6.

GOBBLE.  At Yale College, to seize; to lay hold of; to appropriate; nearly the same as to collar, q.v.