Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In the British universities, a student who passes for his degree without honors.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Eng. Univ. One who passes for a degree, without honors. See classman, 2.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK One who passes a university degree, but without honours.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

pass +‎ -man

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Examples

  • He needs now in fact less repression than encouragement not to be a "passman," as he may if he likes, acquiescing in a lowly measure of culture which certainly will not manufacture Miltons, nor turn serge into silk, broom-blossom into verbenas, but only, perhaps not so faultily, leave Emerald Uthwart and the like of him [227] essentially what they are.

    Miscellaneous Studies; a series of essays Walter Pater 1866

  • "passman", who does not aspire to honours, has to pass (1) the

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3: Brownson-Clairvaux 1840-1916 1913

  • He could hear several feet clumping along the polished tiles (buffed without love by the infirmary passman; you always save your best for the cell), and looked up to see a party of three come through the door: a prisoner and two screws.

    It's October, 1956. Shelagh Power-Chopra 2010

  • He could hear several feet clumping along the polished tiles (buffed without love by the infirmary passman; you always save your best for the cell), and looked up to see a party of three come through the door: a prisoner and two screws.

    Boiling a Frog Brookmyre, Christopher, 1968- 2005

  • He could hear several feet clumping along the polished tiles (buffed without love by the infirmary passman; you always save your best for the cell), and looked up to see a party of three come through the door: a prisoner and two screws.

    Boiling a frog Brookmyre, Christopher, 1968- 2000

  • University education, even for a mere passman, is worthless; I am far from thinking so.

    The Contemporary Review, January 1883 Vol 43, No. 1 Various

  • The passman must first satisfy the examiners in Moderations (i.e. classics combined with logic or mathematics), and then for his Final School may choose between various subjects, such as classics, mathematics, natural science, and modern languages.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 11: New Mexico-Philip 1840-1916 1913

  • The classics are retained as a subject in which all must qualify; and the education provided for the ordinary passman is of a contemptible, smattering kind; it is really no education at all.

    From a College Window Arthur Christopher Benson 1893

  • But while an old and outworn humanist tradition is allowed to prevail, while the studies of the average passman are allowed to be diffuse, desultory, and aimless, and of a kind from which it is useless to expect either animation or precision, so long will a blight rest upon the education of the country.

    From a College Window Arthur Christopher Benson 1893

  • Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is sufficient for some shallow uneducated passman out of either University to get up in his pulpit and express his doubts about Noah's ark, or Balaam's ass, or Jonah and the whale, for half of London to flock to hear him, and to sit open-mouthed in rapt admiration at his superb intellect.

    Intentions Oscar Wilde 1877

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