TRIPOS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Tripos

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noun

Tripos n. (pl. triposes)

A tripod. (Obs.)

A university examination of questionists, for honors; also, a tripos paper; one who prepares a tripos paper. (Cambridge University, Eng.)

Classical tripos examination, the final university examination for classical honors, optional to all who have taken the mathematical honors.

Tripos paper, a printed list of the successful candidates for mathematical honors, accompanied by a piece in Latin verse. There are two of these, designed to commemorate the two tripos days. The first contains the names of the wranglers and senior optimes, and the second the names of the junior optimes. The word tripos is supposed to refer to the three-legged stool formerly used at the examinations for these honors, though some derive it from the three brackets formerly printed on the back of the paper.

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Etymology of 'Tripos'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tripos" Quotes from Famous Books

... the little book of verse ("Quo Musa Tendis?") that I have just been reading. I laid it down and thought of Mr. Birrell's essay on Cambridge Poets, as he calls them: and then of another zealous gentleman, hailing from the same University, who arranged all the British bards in a tripos and brought out the Cambridge men at the top. This was a very characteristic performance: but Mr. Birrell's is hardly less so in these days when (to quote the epistolary parent) so much prominence is given to athleticism in our seats of learning. For he ...

— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... be expressly observed that pedantry of this sort is in no sense the special prerogative of teachers of classics. We meet it everywhere. Among teachers of science the type abounds, and from the papers set in any Natural Sciences Tripos, not to speak of scholarship examinations of every kind, it would be possible to extract question after question that ought never to have been set, referring to things that need never have been taught, and knowledge that no one but a pedant would dream of carrying in ...

— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... these residual perturbations of Uranus excited the imagination of a young student, an undergraduate of St. John's College, Cambridge—John Couch Adams by name—and he determined to have a try at it as soon as he was through his Tripos. In January, 1843, he graduated as Senior Wrangler, and shortly afterwards he set to work. In less than two years he reached a definite conclusion; and in October, 1845, he wrote to the Astronomer-Royal, at Greenwich, Professor Airy, saying that the perturbations of Uranus would be explained ...

— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... parts; all their geese are swans, and that manifestly proves them to be no better than fools. In former times they had but seven wise men, now you can scarce find so many fools. Thales sent the golden tripos, which the fishermen found, and the oracle commanded to be [429] "given to the wisest, to Bias, Bias to Solon," &c. If such a thing were now found, we should all fight for it, as the three goddesses did ...

— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... means to make, is likely to meet with far less distraction of mind than if his sole aim had been to sharpen his mind for the successful practice of the Law, or to obtain a high place in the Mathematical Tripos. ...

— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

Words linked to "Tripos" : exam, examination, test