Linguistics 101: Harvard for Beginners

ABP: Acronym for the fast-food bakery Au Bon Pain, where croissants, chess enthusiasts and tourists abound just beyond the Yard's wrought-iron gates.

A Capella Concerts: 1. Sanders Theatre concerts that take place nearly every weekend in the fall and spring, featuring men in tuxedos and women in black dresses who sing songs from the '60s without instrumental accompaniment. 2. You'll be sick of them by December.

Ac Pro: 1. Academic Probation. 2. Your official status if you do poorly in your classes.

Adams House: 1. So close to the Yard, you'll roll out of bed and land in class. 2. Adopted dining hall for many Quadlings.

Ad Board: 1. The Administrative Board of Harvard College. 2. It decides your fate if you screw up badly enough for anyone to take notice. 3. A verb: He was ad-boarded for getting really drunk and his pushing his proctor out of a fifth-floor window.

Advocate: 1. The Harvard Advocate, a literary magazine. 2. Party rental space.

All-Nighter: 1. What you pull the evening before the due date of that 20-page paper you haven't started. 2. Store 24 flourishes because of these.

Anal: Uptight. Description of your neat-freak roommate who color-codes his CD collection and completes Expos assignments weeks before they're due.

Archaic: 1. For the purposes of this dictionary it mean pre-randomization (see randomization).

Bag: To blow off or skip. I think I'll bag three sections and a paper to go shopping.

Bee: Secretive all-female club that meets weekly to talk ballet, opera, Chanel and Ungaro over tea and lace cookies.

Bic Four-Color Clicker Pen: A must for anal pre meds who like their class notes color-coded (see Pre-med).

Bowling: 1. Going to the Hong Kong to drink alcoholic drinks called scorpion bowls (see Kong).

Breakfast Sandwich: The Harvard Dining Services' Egg McMuffin wannabe.

Cabot House: 1. Spacious Quad House featuring skylights in some rooms; only a short walk (yeah, right) from Harvard Yard. 2. The house everyone is dying to leave.

Cabot Library: 1. A science library in the Science Center. Humanities concentrators do not feel comfortable here. 2. A second home for anal premeds. 3. Where you can watch videotapes of the science lectures you bagged. 4. Open all night during reading period, It's Harvard's version of Store 24--without food.

Cantabrigians: The residents of Cambridge, Mass.

Chickwich: A compressed and processed breaded chicken patty that, for some reason, students adore.

Comp: The only way to get on the staff of The Crimson, the Advocate, or the Lampoon.

Concentration: 1. What every othercollege in America calls a major. 2. What you haveto choose before the end of your first year.

Coop: 1. Where tourists go to buyHarvard sweatshirts and key chains; where you willstand in line for hours at the beginning of eachsemester to buy overpriced textbooks. 2. Rhymeswith "loop" not "blow pop." 3. A massivebureaucrat that pays smaller and smaller andsmaller rebates to its members each year.

Core:1. Eight required courses thatallegedly teach you no facts, figures and ideasbut approaches to knowledge. 2. The reasonwhy you won't have time to take courses that areintellectually stimulating, challenging and fun.

Crimson: 1. The paper you are readingnow. Cambridge's only breakfast table daily,founded in 1873. 2. Almost every athletic team oncampus. 3. The most popular bar among first-yearsin Cambridge.

Crimson Key: 1. Cheery cult of studentscloaked in crimson who organize orientation weekand give campus tours to wide-eyed visitors.

Currier House: 1. Ugly house in the Quadwhere you have to be buzzed to enter.

Date: 1. Rare usage, at Harvard. 2. Ifyou do go on one, consider yourself engaged.

DeWolfe 1. Conveniently located overflowhousing for students in various river houses.Comes complete with MTV, dishwasher, refrigerator,bathtub and bay windows. 2. you and everyone elsewill subsidize these luxury condominiums bysuffering in cockroach-infested, cramped doubleswhen you're sophomores.

Due Date: The day you call your sectionleader for an extension on a paper (seeextension).

Dunster House: thank God it's notMather.

Eliot House: 1. Where Theodore J.Kaczynski '62 spent his formative years. 2.[Archaic] are you on the guest list?

Extension: How to prolong writer'sblock.

Final Clubs: 1. Eight endowed all-maleclubs located in their own buildings, wheremembers and their invited female guests can getdrunk. 2. Bastions of socioeconomic elitism.Unlike Harvard, intelligence is not a prerequisitefor acceptance.

First-Year Student: 1. What you will bein September. 2. Gender-neutral term for"freshman." Synonym: yardling.

Formal What you called a prom in highschool.

The Game: Probably the only footballgame of the year you will attend. This year, it'llbe your turn to trek to New England's industrialwasteland and thank God you came to Harvardinstead.

Gov Jock: 1. The obnoxious people inyour sections who won't let anyone else get a wordin edgewise. 2. Senators in training.

Guts: 1. Course in which no one does anywork and everyone gets at least B+ .2. The mostpopular courses at Harvard.

Hamburger Option: 1. What to ask forwhen Spicy Broccoli-Tofu Peanut Stir Fry simplywon't do. 2. A "last resort" dinner.

Harvard Shuttle Bus: Your lifeline toacademic and student life if you live in the Quad(See Quad).