It was a clue in yesterday’s crossword, with the definition “certificate of illness in universities”. It makes sense. It’s from the Latin verb aegrotare and simply means ‘he is sick’. I’ve just not come across it before. I’d guess it’s more common in UK universities.
Never heard of it. USian, in college seventies-eighties.
I have a feeling it was used at Waterloo in the early eighties.
:: checks Waterloo website ::
Yes, I have come across it in the UK university context.
Yes, NZ university in the 1990s.
Yes, south African university, in the 90s
Yes, UK university.
OK, so we’ve got Canada, New Zealand, the UK, South Africa…and Australia too, according to friends and colleagues. I just never came across it while doing my degrees.
It looks at the very least as though it’s a Commonwealth term.
No, none of the three US universities/colleges I attended, nor any of the three others I’ve taught at.
I thought this was going to be about some trend among college kids to give themselves tattoos of farm animals.
Melbourne and Edinburgh - never heard of it. Not that that proves anything.
Am familiar with the term, in a UK university context. The question of pronunciation possibly comes up – tying-in, I suppose, with one’s preferred Latin-pronouncing conventions: “Ee-gro…”, or “Eye-gro…”? At my uni, Oxford, “Eye-gro-tat” was said. It always suggested to me, a deplorably sexist and disrespectful bit of verbal whimsy – one might say to a well-endowed lady friend: “Aegrotat, and Eugrotit”.
I’ve never seen it used at any of the US colleges/universities I attended. Of course, I doubt anyone at the the cow college where I got my BA has ever even heard of Latin, let alone “aegrotat”.
Of course, most students probably never would hear this, unless is was specifically relevant to their own case. The fact that someone took a degree at a US university and never heard it means nothing. If long established faculty or reasonably high level staff never heard it, though, it probably is not in use.
I am familiar with the word. But only because I recently appeared in a community theater production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and “aegrotat” was one of the spelling words. As I recall, the definition did say that it was used in British universities.
I went to McGill (Montreal, Canada) and have never come across the term there. I never heard the term before this thread.
Decades in US universities of various types. Never heard of it.
US, attended 4 and have worked (including in mental health services) at 6: No.
US, attended and worked at colleges (faculty and administration) for 37 years, never heard the term.
This thread makes me think of this Turkish basketball player.
Two Canadian universities, including the oldest English university in Canada, never heard of it before today.