pennalismn.
/ˈpɛnəlɪz(ə)m/, /ˈpɛnl̩ɪz(ə)m/, U.S. /ˈpɛnəˌlɪz(ə)m/ historical. Now rare.
An oppressive system of fagging practised upon freshmen in German universities in the 17th cent. and abolished about the end of that century.
ΚΠ
1851 Encycl. Americana (new ed.) X. 8/1 Pennalism is the name for the torments and impositions to which the elder students in German Universities used to subject the younger ones, called Pennale (pen-cases), afterwards foxes.
1854 Biblical Repertory Jan. 54 Jena was the most notorious for the rigour of its pennalism.
1863 W. C. Dowding Life & Corr. G. Calixtus iv. 24 Pennalism was a frightful system of ‘bullying’.
1911 Eng. Hist. Rev. 26 421 In the latter days of the Thirty Years' War there was..not much to choose between the German universities in respect of manners, and ‘pennalism’ and other abuses flourished in most of them.
1984 R. A. Factor & S. P. Turner in R. M. Glassman & V. Murvar M. Weber's Polit. Sociol. i. ii. 54 (note) Pennalism was a system of fagging practiced on freshmen in German Protestant universities.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2005; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1851