Word: mensuration
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Today, the usual form of the fight is the Mensur, from the Latin for measure, in reference to the set distance between the swordsmen. Unlike a duel, the fighters are not responding to a challenge, and in fact may not even know each other. The Mensur also differs in the extensive safeguards aimed at preventing any killing. Nobody wins, nobody loses. The object is only to subdue den inner en Schweinehnnd (cowardice) by taking a slash with aplomb. Habitual flinchers are booted out of the fraternity. ''This is the way an elite has to be formed." explains...
...roughness of U. S. college football games as barbaric, the initiations of U. S. college fraternities as infantile. Last week, through the enterprise of press photographers, the U. S. was given an intimate contemporary view of a European college activity seldom viewed by outsiders-the Schläger mensur or "sport duel," as still practiced secretly with sharp sabres at the foremost universities of Germany...
...safe distance, stands the umpire. Just behind is an attendant with a basin of water, a sponge, and a chair, while the doctors hover round the group like vultures scenting slaughter from afar. The buzz of conversation in the ring is immediately hushed as the umpire calls Silentium, zur Mensur! and announces that two members of such and such Verbindungen will fight for 15 minutes. Then one of the seconds gives the word to cross swords; and as the two figures in the middle stand with right arms high in the air and swords crossed, the other second cries...
...full privileges of a Bursche. Each corps has three officers, a president, called Dux; a secretary, and a vice president. Each corps fights twice a half-year with each other corps, and it is very honorable to fight more if possible. As regards choice of men for mensur, the name of a student duel, the regulations are as follows: when the secretary announces to the president that on such a day so many duels must be fought, the president calls for volunteers, if none step forward he drafts men for the duty, the secretaries of the opposing corps arrange...
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