Exhibitioner

[f. prec. + -EN¹.]

  † 1.  One who pays for (a person’s) maintenance. Obs.

c. 1575.  Fulke, Confut. Doctr. Purgatory (1577), 438. To make a fond florish a farre of in wordes of common wrangling, to please your patrones and exhibitioners.

  2.  One who holds an exhibition at a university.

1679.  Burnet, Hist. Ref., I. III. 227 (an. 1536). Yet severe Impositions and heavy Taxes were laid on them; a fifth part for Repairs, a tenth at least for an Exhibitioner.

1707.  Hearne, Collect., 24 Jan. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), I. 319. 10 Exhibitioners who are to study the Hebrew and Greek Tongues.

1843.  Coleridge, in Arnold, Stanley’s Life & Corr. (1844), I. i. 9. Corpus is a very small establishment … with four exhibitioners.

1886.  Oxf. Univ. Calendar, 117. There is a power of renewal … if the College are satisfied with the Scholar or Exhibitioner.

  3.  = EXHIBITOR 1, 2.

1791.  G. Wakefield, Enquiry Publ. Worship, 30. The effect is not so correspondent to the nature of the expected visitant, as to the faculties of the exhibitioner. Ibid. (1792) (ed. 2), 42, note. The indefensible mode of our dissenting exhibitioners.

1840.  Fraser’s Mag., XXI. 730. There is among the present exhibitioners [at the Royal Academy] no lack of this kind of talent.