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The Collaborative International Dictionary
mortarboard

mortarboard \mortarboard\, mortar board \mortar board\n.

  1. A small square board with a handle beneath, for holding mortar; a hawk; used by masons to hold or carry mortar.

  2. An academic cap topped by broad, projecting, stiff and flat square top, with a tassel attached to the top and hanging down. It was once worn by students in some colleges, but is now worn usually only at graduation ceremonies.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
mortarboard

also mortar-board, "academic cap," 1854, probably from mortar (1) + board (n.1); so called because it resembles a mason's square board for carrying mortar.\nEarlier it was called a mortar cap (1680s) or simply morter (c.1600), from French mortier.\n

Wiktionary
mortarboard

n. 1 A square board, with a handle, on which mortar or plaster is carried: a hawk#Etymology 2. 2 An academic cap that has a flat square top with a tassel.

WordNet
mortarboard
  1. n. a square board with a handle underneath; used by masons to hold or carry mortar [syn: hawk]

  2. an academic cap with a flat square with a tassel on top

Usage examples of "mortarboard".

I realized who the professor was as I moved the tassel on my mortarboard to the other side.

I placed the mortarboard on my head and walked back and forth in front of the mirror, watching the way it sat foolishly uncommitted to my skull, the way it called cruel attention to my plump cheeks, the hopeless wobble of my concentric chins.

Offerton had chosen that very moment to come out of the chapel, and now stood in the shadow of the porch, a tall, 14 KEN FOLLETT dyspeptic figure in a college gown and mortarboard hat.

He ran a hand through his thick hair, which was parted in the center, then placed his mortarboard and tassel on top of his head.

He dropped the pint, pulled on his mortarboard, and scrambled up the fence.

Indy looked down at the mortarboard in his hand, and wondered if they could still take away his diploma.

Hiramus looked like an old-fashioned schoolmaster down to the mortarboard, round spectacles and robe with half-sleeves over a hollow chest and a little pot belly.

They were still gone at five when Roberta came home and found Gabe washing off his mortarboard and tools by the pump.

A chimp in a sober black suit with a watch-chain looped athwart his bosom, a mortarboard at a rakish angle on his head, stood at the blackboard armed with a cue.

At the graduation picture: Elena in mortarboard and gown, wearing a look of eagerness and confidence, ready to take on the world with her brains and her charm and her looks.

After staying up all night trying to piece a speech together from a communally written text, I was having a particularly bad hair day, made worse by the mortarboard perching on top.

Amid an ever-thickening stream of energetic, fresh-faced young men and women in black gowns and mortarboards, flanked by families and relatives, being directed by ushers into the immense stadium.

Blinking in the pale, whitely glaring light of the stadium, the Poet wants to think that these respectfully applauding young people-some of them alarm-ingly young-in their black gowns and mortarboards, gazing at him and the other elders as they march past, know who he is, and what his work has been-a fantasy, yet how it warms him!

Commencement custom, in which numerous graduates in billowing black gowns and mortarboards, smiling shyly, stiffly, at times radiantly as they shake hands with their respective deans, the Provost, and the Chancellor, proceed across the platform from left to right.

Both mortarboards are cast off to one side and Henry grabs them to keep them from getting crushed.