sport the oak

English

Verb

sport the oak (third-person singular simple present sports the oak, present participle sporting the oak, simple past and past participle sported the oak)

1. Alternative form of sport one's oak
   • 1871 December 8, Auspex [pseudonym], “Sporting the Oak”, in The Harvard Advocate, volume XII, number V, Cambridge, Mass.: Editors of The Harvard Advocate, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 71:

     In England, to sport the oak is considered an act eminently proper and commendable; but we seem to think it is a habit destructive of our college freedom. If a visitor obtains no response to his tenth kick, cannot he take the hint that his company is not desirable at present and move off quietly, without informing the occupant of the said room that he knows he is there, and that he cannot see the reason why he is refused admittance.

   • 1873–1884 (date written), Samuel Butler, chapter LXX, in R[ichard] A[lexander] Streatfeild, editor, The Way of All Flesh, London: Grant Richards, published 1903, →OCLC, page 317:

     "Goodness gracious," I exclaimed, "why didn't we sport the oak? Perhaps it is your father. But surely he would hardly come at this time of day! Go at once into my bedroom."

   • 1961, R[onald] V[erlin] Cassill, chapter 4, in Clem Anderson, New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 123:

     [H]e recreated something like Balliol on the prairies. He brewed tea each afternoon on his "spirit lamp" (sold at the student co-op as an alcohol burner), kept Scotch-type whisky in his cupboard, "tutored" with a Jewish boy from Brooklyn (actually the boy ghosted all his science and math work), and "sported the oak" when, as Clem conjectured later, he required a session of masturbation to the tune of Beardsley illustrations.

   • 1974, Tom Sharpe, chapter 9, in Porterhouse Blue, 1st American edition, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, →ISBN, page 95:

     Mrs. Biggs let herself into Zipser's room and sported the oak. She had no intention of being disturbed.

   • 1984, Hallam Tennyson, “Needful Parts”, in The Haunted Mind: An Autobiography, London: André Deutsch, →ISBN, page 46:

     We were turned at a slight angle to each other, our shoulders touching and I put my hand on his crotch. Miles seemed to be expecting it. He chuckled, took a pair of compasses and jammed them into the door above the latch. This was called ‘sporting the oak’ and was the recognized way of locking oneself in. Over the next eighteen months we sported our oaks with great frequency.