Harry Soph

A student at Cambridge who has “declared” for Law or Physic, and wears a full-sleeve gown. The word is a corruption of the Greek Heri-sophos (more than a Soph or common second-year student). (Cambridge Calendar.)

The tale goes that at the destruction of the monasteries, in the reign of Henry VIII., certain students waited to see how matters would turn out before they committed themselves by taking a clerical degree, and that these men were thence called Sophistœ Henriciani, or “Henry Sophisters.”

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.