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matriculate (verb) – To admit or be admitted into a group, especially a college or university.

I can remember as a young child hearing my father talking about matriculating. I worried that it was some form of removal of his manhood, only later to discover that it was not quite so drastic.

(noun) – One who is admitted as a student to a college or university.

Source : The Free Dictionary

Etymology : 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—even in terms of Latin history. It is more closely related to Late Latin matricula, which means “public roll or register.” Matricula has more to do with being enrolled than being mothered, but it is the diminutive form of the Latin matrix , which in Late Latin was used in the sense of “list” or “register” and earlier referred to female animals kept for the purposes of breeding.

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