AL, Thank you, great stuff.
Bob
More than you can believe.....THANK YOU FOR READING IT!!
The folks at Hillsdale College are the furthest thing from "fringies" or "whackos"..... this is a college where, when it was founded in 1844 and which had such stringent ENTRANCE requirements that college graduates of today couldn't get in, let alone move towards any sort of degree.
errata,
(I've amended this because it was pointed out to me that I used (misused) 'matriculate' previously. I meant it as "get in and move forward with their education'..... not necessarily "graduate" as that's a moving target, but to keep up a solid grade average etc..... What I MEANT to imply was that Hillsdale college is not representative of what we see today, ie you "get in" because of skin color or sexual preference and then you're allowed to continue regardless of attitude, aptitude or performance just as long as the money keeps coming. Implied is also that "the money" will keep coming as long as you fulfill certain "minority status requirements" in a modern college. And that there are no standards one must maintain in order to stay in class)
In more common usage 'matriculate' does simply mean to get in.
This, from Merriam Webster;
Anybody who has had basic Latin knows that alma mater, a fancy term for the school you attended, comes from a phrase that means "fostering mother." If mater is "mother," then matriculate probably has something to do with a school nurturing you just like good old mom, right? Not exactly. If you go back far enough, matriculate is distantly related to the Latin mater, but its maternal associations were lost long ago. It is more closely related to Late Latin matricula, which means "public roll or register," and it has more to do with being enrolled than being mothered.
I'm happy to stand corrected for archaic usage. A mind as filled with minutiae as mine does often need correction
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