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Linguistics 101: Harvard for Beginners

ABP: Acronym for the fast-food bakery Au Bon Pain, where croissants, chess enthusiasts and tourists abound just beyond the Yard's wrought-iron gates.

A Capella Concerts: 1. Sanders Theatre concerts that take place nearly every weekend in the fall and spring, featuring men in tuxedos and women in black dresses who sing songs from the '60s without instrumental accompaniment. 2. You'll be sick of them by December.

Ac Pro: 1. Academic Probation. 2. Your official status if you do poorly in your classes.

Adams House: 1. So close to the Yard, you'll roll out of bed and land in class. 2. Adopted dining hall for many Quadlings.

Ad Board: 1. The Administrative Board of Harvard College. 2. It decides your fate if you screw up badly enough for anyone to take notice. 3. A verb: He was ad-boarded for getting really drunk and his pushing his proctor out of a fifth-floor window.

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Advocate: 1. The Harvard Advocate, a literary magazine. 2. Party rental space.

All-Nighter: 1. What you pull the evening before the due date of that 20-page paper you haven't started. 2. Store 24 flourishes because of these.

Anal: Uptight. Description of your neat-freak roommate who color-codes his CD collection and completes Expos assignments weeks before they're due.

Archaic: 1. For the purposes of this dictionary it mean pre-randomization (see randomization).

Bag: To blow off or skip. I think I'll bag three sections and a paper to go shopping.

Bee: Secretive all-female club that meets weekly to talk ballet, opera, Chanel and Ungaro over tea and lace cookies.

Bic Four-Color Clicker Pen: A must for anal pre meds who like their class notes color-coded (see Pre-med).

Bowling: 1. Going to the Hong Kong to drink alcoholic drinks called scorpion bowls (see Kong).

Breakfast Sandwich: The Harvard Dining Services' Egg McMuffin wannabe.

Cabot House: 1. Spacious Quad House featuring skylights in some rooms; only a short walk (yeah, right) from Harvard Yard. 2. The house everyone is dying to leave.

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