"Freshman"

[Carol]

Shaun wrote on the main list:

"You use the term 'freshman' in this paragraph, and I think that illustrates part of the reason why I am focusing on this. It's an American term applied in American education. It's a cultural construct that would very possibly be relevant in any discussion of a school story set in the United States and which Americans would understand far more instinctively without any need for it to be debated or discussed in comparison to those of us from other educational cultures."

Carol responds:

I just want to respond to this one snippet because a copyeditor for the Oxford New Dictionary of Biography called my use of the word "freshman" to refer to a friend of P. B. Shelley's at Oxford an Americanism. Actually, it's no such thing and may well have been in use in England in Shelley's time, whether it is now or not.

It was first used in England c.1550 and meant "newcomer" "novice" (a "fresh" man). The sense of first-year university student is "attested from 1596." according the the Online Etymology Dictionary.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=f&p=12

IIRC, it was first used in the colleges (Eton or possibly Harrow) and "man" was used loosely to mean a new student, not necessarily in his first year. 

The first American university, Harvard, was founded in 1636, forty years after "freshman" came into use to mean a first-year student.

Sorry. Had to point that out. It's a pet peeve of mine thanks to that copyeditor.

Carol, who yielded to the copyeditor and changed "freshman" to "first-year student" but has since seen "freshman" in another New DNB article