Undergrads

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Students enrolled at a college or university who are working toward their first degree and have not yet graduated
2. Learners attending a higher education institution to pursue an initial bachelor's qualification before completing their studies
3. Young people studying at a university for a first degree, as opposed to postgraduate scholars already holding one

Etymology: "Undergrads" is the plural of "undergrad," a clipping of "undergraduate." The longer form combines "under" with "graduate," and the "graduate" element comes from the Latin "graduatus," meaning a person advanced to a degree. The "under" refers to the lower rank: an undergraduate is a student who has not yet taken a university degree, as opposed to a graduate who has. Clipping simply shortens a longer word by dropping its end, and this process has produced many familiar student slang terms. Here the shortened form keeps the meaning of the whole word while losing the final syllables, so "undergrad" and "undergraduate" refer to the same people.

Synonyms: undergraduate, student

Antonyms: graduate, postgraduate