With regard to the word sport, they [the Cantabrigians] sported knowing, and they sported ignorant,—­they sported an AEgrotat, and they sported a new coat,—­they sported an Exeat, they sported a Dormiat, &c.—­Gent.  Mag., 1794, p. 1085.

  I’m going to serve my country,
    And sport a pretty wife.
    Presentation Day Songs, June 14, 1854, Yale Coll.

To sport oak, or a door, is to fasten a door for safety or convenience.

If you call on a man and his door is sported, signifying that he is out or busy, it is customary to pop your card through the little slit made for that purpose.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 336.

Some few constantly turn the keys of their churlish doors, and others, from time to time, “sport oak.”—­Harv.  Mag., Vol.  I. p. 268.

SPORTING-DOOR.  At the English universities, the name given to the outer door of a student’s room, which can be sported or fastened to prevent intrusion.

Their impregnable sporting-doors, that defy alike the hostile dun and the too friendly “fast man.”—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 3.

SPREAD.  A feast of a more humble description than a GAUDY.  Used at Cambridge, England.

This puts him in high spirits again, and he gives a large spread, and gets drunk on the strength of it.—­Gradus ad Cantab., p. 129.

He sits down with all of them, about forty or fifty, to a most glorious spread, ordered from the college cook, to be served up in the most swell style possible.—­Ibid., p. 129.

SPROUT.  Any branch of education is in student phrase a sprout.  This peculiar use of the word is said to have originated at Yale.

SPRUNG.  The positive, of which tight is the comparative, and drunk the superlative.

  “One swallow makes not spring,” the poet sung,
  But many swallows make the fast man sprung.
    MS. Poem, by F.E.  Felton.

See TIGHT.

SPY.  In some of the American colleges, it is a prevailing opinion among the students, that certain members of the different classes are encouraged by the Faculty to report what they have seen or ascertained in the conduct of their classmates, contrary to the laws of the college.  Many are stigmatized as spies very unjustly, and seldom with any sufficient reason.

SQUIRT.  At Harvard College, a showy recitation is denominated a squirt; the ease and quickness with which the words flow from the mouth being analogous to the ease and quickness which attend the sudden ejection of a stream of water from a pipe.  Such a recitation being generally perfect, the word squirt is very often used to convey that idea.  Perhaps there is not, in the whole vocabulary of college cant terms, one more expressive than this, or that so easily conveys its meaning merely by its sound.  It is mostly used colloquially.