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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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today's Merriam-Webster word-of-the-day is redbrick, relating to British universities built of such material in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and suggesting that this may be used in negative comparison to the old stone found in Oxford and Cambridge; e.g., a redbrick degree. is there a parallel usage which goes the opposite way, putting down the Oxbridge achievement?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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putting down the Oxbridge achievement
I can't think of a singular term - but into my head popped the wonderful MP Twit of the Year Show sketch!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>is there a parallel usage which goes the opposite way, putting down the Oxbridge achievement?
No, but these days "redbrick" is not necessarily a put-down. It's a bit like "brown stone" in the USA. People are rather proud of having been to a "red-brick" like Manchester University.
To find a put-down you have to look at the word "breeze-block" used for those, post 1960s Universities (Sussex, Salford, UMIST) and former Polytechnics which didn't even get even built of bricks!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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The subtle "put-down" these days is "New University" - meaning one of those universities that used to be a Polytechnic, and which bear rather fanciful names to differentiate them from the established "redbrick" uni's which bear the nema of the town or region in which they are situated.
Oxford Poly, for instance, became Oxford Brookes University - and is therfore unkindly referred to by the rest of Oxford as "Oxford B."
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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[green[putting down the Oxbridge achievement? Oxbridge is un-put-downable - even if you attempted it, they would merely ignore you. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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surely 'oxbridge' itself must annoy one or the other, if not both...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
surely 'oxbridge' itself must annoy one or the other, if not both...
This reminded me of a scene from "Blackadder Goes Forth" where Blackadder says that he deduced someone was a spy by listing hree great English universities - Oxford, Cambridge, and some redbrick which escapes my recall. He mentioned to his commander that of course only two of those were great universities, to which his CO replied "Too right. Cambridge is a bloody dump."
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addict
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addict
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surely 'oxbridge' itself must annoy one or the other, if not both...
Consider the term 'Oxbridge' as the equivalent of 'Ivy League'.
Either can be put-down or praise, depending on context and/or tone of voice.
Which leads to a question - the derivation of Oxbridge is pretty obvious - where did the term Ivy League come from?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>where did the term Ivy League come from?
for all sort of varied opinions on this, try a google search on: "ivy league" origin
the simplest explanation is that it comes from all the ivy-covered walls...
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