public school

plural public schools · alternative public-school

1. IndiaIrelandUKCertain private schools, particularly (initially) any grammar school operated apart from the personal lands of its students or (from the 19th century) the feepaying secondary schools which developed from or were modelled upon them; a British boarding school.

   It turned out she was posh, or posh-ish, having been to a public school somewhere in Hampshire.

   2005, Nick Laird, Utterly Monkey, section 223

   5 more examples

   All such School-masters as have charge of Children and do instruct them either in Publick Schools, or Private Houses.

   1580 June 18, Letters of the Privy Council in John Strype's History of Edmund Grindal (1710), ii.xi.254

   No person shall keepe any schoole... except it be in some publike [public] or free Grammer Schoole, or in some such noblemans... or gentlemans... house as are not recusants.

   1604, Acts of Parliament 1 under James I, c.4, §8

   This worthy Man having observed the imperfect Institution of our public Schools, and the many Vices which Boys were there liable to learn, had resolved to educate his Nephew... in his own House.

   1749, Henry Fielding, chapter V, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume I, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book III, page 184

   Our Public Schools... (by which phrase we never mean real public schools like the Board schools at all, but merely schools for the upper and middle classes) are in their existing stage primarily great gymnasiums.

   1893 February 4, Westminster Gazette, section 2

   Who is there who has not jeered at the House of Lords, the military caste, the Royal Family, the public schools, the huntin′ and shootin′ people, the old ladies in Cheltenham boarding houses, the horrors of ‘county’ society and the social hierarchy generally?

   1937, George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, section 146

   Synonyms: boarding school, private school

2. AustraliaCanadaNew ZealandPhilippinesSouth AfricaUSformerly ScottishA publicly funded and administered school; (UK, Ireland) such schools in the context of other countries.

   The Court voted for the erecting a Publick Schooll or Colledge in Cambridge.

   1636, Harvard College Records, published 1925, I.171

   5 more examples

   The Governor and Provincial Council shall erect and order all public Schooles.

   1683, Pennsylvania Frame of Government, §10

   By Act of Parliament no school is to be kept within two miles of a publick school.

   1702, Henry Paton, Minnigaff Parish Records: the Session Book of Minnigaff, 1694-1750, published 1939

   A subscription... by a great part of the settlers and others to build a Public School at the Green Hills.

   1804 August 12, Sydney Gazette, section 1

   Hardly anywhere in France... can the private boys' schools, whether they be lay or congreganist, hold their own in the competition with the public schools.

   1861, Matthew Arnold, The Popular Education of France, with Notices of that of Holland and Switzerland, x.105

   Every school under the management of the school board of a parish shall be deemed a parish school, and every school under the management of the school board of a burgh shall be deemed a burgh school, and all such schools are hereby declared to be public schools within the meaning of this Act.

   1872, Acts of Parliament 35 & 36 under Victoria (Scotland), c.62, §25

   Synonyms: comprehensive school, free school, state school

3. obsoleteA college or university.

   ante 1593, Christopher Marlowe, Tragicall Hist. Faustus (1604), sig. A3v Ile haue them fill the publike schooles with skill. Wherewith the students shal be brauely clad.

   2 more examples

   Thither [to Douai] he went, where after a yeres great diligence and many excercises done booth in house and publike scholes, he proceded bachilier of diuinitie [bachelor of divinity].

   1582, W. Allen, Briefe Hist. Glorious Martyrdom, sig. d3

   That which is now called an University, is a Joyning together, and an Incorporation under one Government of many Publique Schools, in one and the same Town or City.

   1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, iv.xlvi.370