Notions
A notion is a manner or tradition peculiar to Winchester College. The word notion is also used to refer to unique and peculiar words used (with diminishing frequency) in the school. An example is "toytime", meaning prep or homework. It can also refer to more recent slang, some of which features the altering of vowels in certain words for facetious emphasis.
The Notions Test was until recently an important tradition in most houses, in which juniors were required to answer questions about notions. Although now banned on various grounds including the European human rights conventions, the test was usually administered to new boys during their first term at the school by more senior boys, and aimed to test and demonstrate their familiarity with the vocabulary, history and traditions of the school. College Notions was more elaborate and continued for a few years longer than the Commoner tests. It took the form of an end-of-term celebration and marked the point at which new Collegemen formally became known as Jun: Men.
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Famous quotes containing the word notions:
“Assumptions that racism is more oppressive to black men than black women, then and now ... based on acceptance of patriarchal notions of masculinity.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“Even the simple act that we call “going to visit a person of our acquaintance” is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the person we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the totality of our impressions about him, these notions play the most important role.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas—uncertainty, progress, change—into crimes.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)