public school
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.33 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
2
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Certain private schools, particularly (initially) any grammar school operated apart from the personal lands of its students or (from the 19th century) the feepaying secondary schools which developed from or were modelled upon them; a British boarding school.
Indian usage; British usage
Example Sentences
- "All such School-masters as have charge of Children and do instruct them either in Publick Schools, or Private Houses."
- "No person shall keepe any schoole... except it be in some publike [public] or free Grammer Schoole, or in some such noblemans... or gentlemans... house as are not recusants."
- "This worthy Man having observed the imperfect Institution of our public Schools, and the many Vices which Boys were there liable to learn, had resolved to educate his Nephew... in his own House."
- "Our Public Schools... (by which phrase we never mean real public schools like the Board schools at all, but merely schools for the upper and middle classes) are in their existing stage primarily great gymnasiums."
- "Who is there who has not jeered at the House of Lords, the military caste, the Royal Family, the public schools, the huntin′ and shootin′ people, the old ladies in Cheltenham boarding houses, the horrors of ‘county’ society and the social hierarchy generally?"
- "It turned out she was posh, or posh-ish, having been to a public school somewhere in Hampshire."
Etymology
From public + school: originally, “public” in the sense of "communal" and contrasted with personal tutors; later, "state-run" and contrasted with private schools.