The third class, or that of Junior Optimes, is usually about at numerous as the first [that of the Wranglers], but its limits are more extensive, varying from twenty-five to sixty.  A majority of the Classical men are in it; the rest of its contents are those who have broken down before the examination from ill-health or laziness, and choose the Junior Optime as an easier pass degree under their circumstances than the Poll, and those who break down in the examination; among these last may be sometimes found an expectant Wrangler.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d p. 228.

The word is frequently abbreviated.

Two years ago he got up enough of his low subjects to go on among the Junior Ops.—­Ibid., p. 53.

There are only two mathematical papers, and these consist almost entirely of high questions; what a Junior Op. or low Senior Op. can do in them amounts to nothing.—­Ibid., p. 286.

JUNIOR SOPHISTER.  At the University of Cambridge, Eng., a student in the second year of his residence is called Junior Soph or Sophister.

2.  In some American colleges, a member of the Junior Class, i.e. of the third year, was formerly designated a Junior Sophister.

See SOPHISTER.

K.

KEEP.  To lodge, live, dwell, or inhabit.  To keep in such a place, is to have rooms there.  This word, though formerly used extensively, is now confined to colleges and universities.

Inquire of anybody you meet in the court of a college at Cambridge your way to Mr. A——­’s room, you will be told that he keeps on such a staircase, up so many pair of stairs, door to the right or left.—­Forby’s Vocabulary, Vol.  II. p. 178.

He said I ought to have asked for his rooms, or inquired where he kept.—­Gent.  Mag., 1795, p. 118.

Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, cites this very apposite passage from Shakespeare:  “Knock at the study where they say he keeps.”  Mr. Pickering, in his Vocabulary, says of the word:  “This is noted as an Americanism in the Monthly Anthology, Vol.  V. p. 428.  It is less used now than formerly.”

To keep an act, in the English universities, “to perform an exercise in the public schools preparatory to the proceeding in degrees.”  The phrase was formerly in use in Harvard College.  In an account in the Mass.  Hist.  Coll., Vol.  I. p. 245, entitled New England’s First Fruits, is the following in reference to that institution:  “The students of the first classis that have beene these foure yeeres trained up in University learning, and are approved for their manners, as they have kept their publick Acts in former yeeres, ourselves being present at them; so have they lately kept two solemn Acts for their Commencement.”

To keep chapel, in colleges, to attend Divine services, which are there performed daily.