1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sizar

SIZAR, one of a class of students at a college of Cambridge University and at Trinity College, Dublin, who, being persons of limited means, are received for lower fees, and obtain free commons, lodgings or other assistance towards their education during their terms of residence. At Oxford there was formerly a similar class, known as “Battelers” or “Batlers,” who originally waited on the Fellow of the College who had nominated them, and a still more humble class, the “servitors,” who, perhaps, answered more to a “subsizar” at Cambridge. The name “sizar” is to be connected with the “sizes” or “sizings” (“size” being a shortened form of “assize”), that is the specified portions of food and drink issued at a fixed price from the buttery of the college; the sizar was so styled either because as one of his former duties he had to fetch the “sizes” for others, or because he obtained his own free. The menial duties of “sizars” at Cambridge have long become obsolete.