SOPHRONISCUS.  At Yale College, this name is given to Arnold’s Greek Prose Composition, from the fact of its repeated occurrence in that work.

  Sophroniscum relinquemus;
  Et Euclidem comburemus,
  Ejus vi soluti.
    Pow-wow of Class of ’58, Yale Coll.

See BALBUS.

SPIRT.  Among the students at the University of Cambridge, Eng., an extraordinary effort of mind or body for a short time.  A boat’s crew make a spirt, when they pull fifty yards with all the strength they have left.  A reading-man makes a spirt when he crams twelve hours daily the week before examination.—­Bristed.

As my ... health was decidedly improving, I now attempted a “spirt,” or what was one for me.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 223.

My amateur Mathematical coach, who was now making his last spirt for a Fellowship, used to accompany me.—­Ibid., p. 288.

He reads nine hours a day on a “spirt” the fortnight before examination.—­Ibid., p. 327.

SPIRTING.  Making an extraordinary effort of mind or body for a short time.—­Bristed.

Ants, bees, boat-crews spirting at the Willows,... are but faint types of their activity.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 224.

SPLURGE.  In many colleges, when one is either dashy, or dressed more than ordinarily, he is said to cut a splurge.  A showy recitation is often called by the same name.  In his Dictionary of Americanisms, Mr. Bartlett defines it, “a great effort, a demonstration,” which is the signification in which this word is generally used.

SPLURGY.  Showy; of greater surface than depth.  Applied to a lesson which is well rehearsed but little appreciated.  Also to literary efforts of a certain nature, to character, persons, &c.

They even pronounce his speeches splurgy.—­Yale Tomahawk, May, 1852.

SPOON.  In the University of Cambridge, Eng., the last of each class of the honors is humorously denominated The Spoon.  Thus, the last Wrangler is called the Golden Spoon; the last Senior Optime, the Silver Spoon; and the last Junior Optime, the Wooden Spoon.  The Wooden Spoon, however, is par excellence, “The Spoon.”—­Gradus ad Cantab.

See WOODEN SPOON.

SPOON, SPOONY, SPOONEY.  A man who has been drinking till he becomes disgusting by his very ridiculous behavior, is said to be spoony drunk; and hence it is usual to call a very prating, shallow fellow a rank spoon.—­Grose.

Mr. Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms, says:—­“We use the word only in the latter sense.  The Hon. Mr. Preston, in his remarks on the Mexican war, thus quotes from Tom Crib’s remonstrance against the meanness of a transaction, similar to our cries for more vigorous blows on Mexico when she is prostrate: