The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sophister \Soph"ist*er\, v. t.
To maintain by sophistry, or by a fallacious argument. [Obs.]
--obham.
Sophister \Soph"ist*er\, n.
A sophist. See Sophist. [Obs.]
--Hooker.-
(Eng. Univ.) A student who is advanced beyond the first year of his residence.
Note: The entire course at the university consists of three years and one term, during which the students have the titles of first-year men, or freshmen; second-year men or junior sophs or sophisters; third-year men, or senior sophs or sophisters; and, in the last term, questionists, with reference to the approaching examination. In the older American colleges, the junior and senior classes were originally called, and in some of them are still called, junior sophisters and senior sophisters.
Wiktionary
n. 1 a sophist 2 (context dated UK English universities English) A student who is advanced beyond the first year of his residence.
Usage examples of "sophister".
There the Latinist and sophister and every unlearned writer tries the fitness of his pen, a practice that we have frequently seen injuring the usefulness and value of the most beautiful books.
The rest of the girls-not only the freshers, but the sophisters and seniors-entered in a whispering clot and arranged themselves on sofas and lounges in Crage Hall's nicest parlor.
These sophisters substitute a fictitious cause and feigned personages, in whose favor they suppose you engaged whenever you defend the inheritable nature of the crown.
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and magazines of our rights and privileges.
The people of England will show to the haughty potentates of the world, and to their talking sophisters, that a free, a generous, an informed nation honors the high magistrates of its church.
He might be embarrassed if the case were really such as sophisters represent it in their paltry style of debating.