Glossary of Cambridge jargonGlossary of Cambridge jargonParker's Piece - open land in the town, in the centre of which is Reality Checkpoint.
Part - a stage of Tripos examination, as in Part I or Part II. Part II is normally a third or fourth year examination. Part I may be subdivided into Parts Ia and Ib, normally taken in the first and second years. It is usually necessary to obtain honours in all parts to qualify for a Bachelor of Arts degree.
PBI - Plant Breeding International (formerly Plant Breeding Institute).
Pendlebury - the library of the Faculty of Music.
Pensioner - synonymous with commoner.
Pepys - library at Magdalene College.
Pernoctation - the duty of a Tutor to sleep overnight in college.
PGCE - Postgraduate Certificate in Education.
Philosophical Society - a learned society devoted to mathematics and the sciences.
Phoenix (i) - formerly the university mainframe computing service.
Phoenix (ii) - a building on the New Museums Site.
Physic - medicine.
Physics - physics.
Piece - land, as in Christ's Pieces, Parker's Piece. Now usually laid to grass.
Pigeonhole - (noun) a personal mailbox, typically in the Porters' Lodge; (verb) to leave a message for someone in their pigeon-hole.
Pitt Building - former headquarters of the CUP, on the Press Site.
Pitt Club - private university club having a building in Jesus Lane.
Placet - a supporting vote for a Grace.
Plodge - student slang for Porters' Lodge.
o`i polloí (hoi polloi) Poll Men - formerly an examination classification below the Junior Optimes, the closest modern analogy being the Ordinary Degree. Such men would be pretty dim. The dimmest were "plucked" from the lists - i.e. forced to defer graduating until they had improved.
Porter - (or Gate Porter) a college staff member who tends the gates of the college. Not someone who carries your luggage. From the Latin porta, door.
Porter - (or Outside Porter) a college staff member who carries things around. Not someone who looks after the gates. From the Latin portare, to carry.
Porters' Lodge - place where the Gate Porters work and sleep.
Postgraduate - at Cambridge, a student reading for a Master's degree (other than an M.Phil. or M.A.), some Diplomas, or Certificates. To be distinguished from Graduate Student.
Praelector - a college officer (formerly known as Father of the College) who is responsible for matriculating students, preparing supplicats, and presenting graduands for their degrees.
Precincts of the University - everywhere within three miles of Great St Mary's Church, within which students must reside in order to keep term.
Preliminary Examination (colloquially Prelims) - a progress examination in the university, not contributing to degree qualification.
President - at Queens' College, Clare Hall, Hughes Hall, Lucy Cavendish College, New Hall and Wolfson College, the head of the College. At some other colleges, the President is a Fellow appointed to preside in the SCR.
President's Lodge - a part of Queens' College forming the home of the President and his family.
Press Site - university buildings between Mill Lane and Silver Street; the former location of the CUP.
Principal - at Newnham College and Homerton College, the head of the College.
Proctor - university disciplinary officers. There is one Senior Proctor and one Junior Proctor, and several Pro-Proctors.
Professor - the most senior university academic appointment.
Professorial Fellowship - class of college Fellowship held by a University Professor, who are forbidden by Ordinance to undertake college teaching. A quota system operates to ensure that all colleges share the burden of supporting Professorial Fellowships.
Promulgation - official publication (in the Reporter) of (for example) the Roll of the Regent House, and Register of the Senate.
Pro-Proctor - assistant Proctor.
Provost - at King's College, the head of the college.
Punt - a long flat-bottomed boat of shallow draught, originally evolved for shooting wild-fowl, but now popular at both Oxford and Cambridge as a pleasure craft. Propelled by sticking a pole in the river bed and pushing. Oxford, in misguided idealism, insist on punting with the punt the original way around, with the flat gun-deck leading, standing in the body of the craft at the rear. Cambridge, in their pragmatic scientific way, have determined that it is far easier and safer to reverse the punt, and push the pole standing on the gun-deck at the rear. As proof of the evolution of inanimate objects, punts have recently evolved at Cambridge to have a flat deck at both ends, thus making it easier for the tourist to spot the Cambridge end.
Punting - the act of propelling a punt. As with all objects where a forward-acting force is applied at a point a long way behind the centre of gravity, a punt is fundamentally unstable, with errors of direction tending to magnify rather than be self-correcting. So punting correctly (in a dead straight line with no apparent effort) is more difficult than it looks. The secret agenda appears to be that both Oxford and Cambridge have discovered this to be a way of getting tourists to pay large amounts of money to make fools of themselves in public.
Pythagoras, School of - popular name for Merton Hall, now part of St John's College, the only surviving medieval non-collegiate house in Cambridge.
This compilation is Copyright (C) R.D.H. Walker 1991-97. rdhw@cam.ac.uk