A Speccie reader has alerted me to the use of an odd word ‘alum’ to refer to the graduates of his old universe. When he wrote to protest that this was a nonsense word he was told ‘Alum is the non-gender specific term for a singular graduate (rather than specifying gender – alumnus/masculine or alumna/feminine)…’ He was also told that ‘alum’ had been coined in the 19th century.