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You are here: Home / Language / How did the Term “Ivy League” Originate, Where did it Come From, and What does it Mean?

How did the Term “Ivy League” Originate, Where did it Come From, and What does it Mean?

June 26, 2020 by Karen Hill

The term Ivy League has nothing to do with the ivy-covered walls of the prestigious schools to which it refers.

How did the Term

Several Eastern U.S. schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, became known collectively as the “Interscholastic Four League,” but the four was always written in Roman numerals, “IV”, and was pronounced “eye-vee.”

By the end of the Second World War, the league had expanded to include Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Although there were then eight schools included in the league, instead of changing its name, the league decided to spell it the way it had been traditionally pronounced, and so it became the “Ivy League.”

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Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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