A College Vocabulary

Mak came back from the Old Boys Weekend with a book for me. It's the Malay College 1905-1965 book published to commemorate the College's Diamond Jubilee. I had always been looking for this particular book and even the College's own library or archive is lacking it. Nevertheless, this book is not mine to keep, merely lended to me by a friend of my dad.

Most of the materials I've read about the College are often from the late 70s and those which originated from this book are often abriged and summarized, leaving most of the details out. It's not to say that the latter versions are inaccurate, but compared to a book published in 1965 and include interviews from some of the boys from the first batch, this book gives you first hand detail of what life was like back then.

While the book is a really good read, one particular part of the book really captured my interest more than the other: A College Vocabulary. As the name suggest, the article features all or most of the Vocab Koleq from back then. What could be cooler? I noticed that through the times, some vocabs managed to survive while most of them die away with the times. It's a sad thing to lose all this since it gives us a perspective of what life was back then and how the boys communicate. Furthermore, it is very uncommon to stumble upon this sort of material in print since we Budak Koleq don't usually write this down for some reason..

True to the College's proud tradition, the vocabs were introduced by these strong words:

Below is given a brief list of some words in use amongst collegians which enjoy a meaning peculiar to the College.

If, as a collegian, you come across a term you have never heard of before, it is either because of it is archaic (arch.) or just invented, or confined to a certain group - or because you have been unneccessarily pure.

If, as an outsider, you recognise some of these words as general slang in common use, you may rest assured that they were first invented by collegians.

Interesting isn't it? Since I noticed some of the words in it are currently being used as a general slang among Malaysians. Does it means that it was invented by Collegians? Decide for your self. I didn't have my scanner along and typing would be hard so I snapped some high quality, readable pictures of it. Just click on the picture below to view them all.













We are proud to be Collegians, how can we ever make you see?

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