demy

English

Etymology

• (scholarship): From Latin demi-socii (“half-fellows”); see socius.

Noun

demy (countable and uncountable, plural demies)

1. A printing paper size, 17½ inches by 22½ inches.
2. (colloquial) One holding a demyship, a kind of scholarship for Magdalen College, Oxford.
   • 1781, Samuel Johnson, Addison, Lives of the Poets, 1840, Arthur Murphy (editor), The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Volume 2, page 132,

     […] by whose recommendations he was elected into Magdalen College as a demy; a term by which that society denominates those elsewhere called scholars, young men who partake of the founder's benefaction, and succeed in their order to vacant fellowships; […]

3. Junior scholar, specifically at Magdalen College, Oxford.
   • 2013, Hedwig Gwosdek, “The grammar atttributed to William Lily”, in Lily's grammar of Latin in English : an introduction of the eyght partes of speche, and the construction of the same, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 89:

     William Lily was admitted as a dumy to Magdalen College, Oxford, by November 1486, at the age of seventeen

Derived terms

• double demy
• junior demy
• music demy
• quad demy
• senior demy

Anagrams

• emyd

Middle French

Noun

demy m (plural demys)

1. half (50% of something)

Descendants

• French: demi