Colleger

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who is enrolled at or belongs to a college, especially one of the scholars attending a school or university
2. Someone studying at a college or belonging to its community as a member of the student body
3. A student who attends a college, particularly a member of a foundation or institution of higher learning

Etymology: "Colleger" is simply "college" with the agent suffix "-er" added, producing a word for a person who attends or belongs to a college. The base word "college" comes from Latin "collegium," a association or community of people bound together by shared purpose, and it entered English with the sense of a body of colleagues before it came to mean an institution of learning. The suffix does the work here: "-er" turns a noun or verb into a person connected with it, as in "banker" or "villager." Attaching it to "college" gives a plain, descriptive label for a student at one, a word that sits comfortably beside more familiar terms like "undergraduate" without replacing them. It is a straightforward formation, and the word's meaning follows directly from its parts.

Synonyms: collegian, student, undergraduate