The meaning of ALUMNUS is a person who has attended or has graduated from a particular school, college, or university —usually used of a man in the singular but often of men and women in the plural. Alumnus is a masculine noun whose plural is alumni , and alumna is a feminine noun whose plural is alumnae. Coeducational institutions usually use alumni for graduates of both sexes. Alumni can be used to refer to men only, and in that case alumnae is used to refer to women only, but more often alumni is used to refer to either or both sexes where both attend the same school. The singular forms are alumnus for a man, and alumna for a woman. There were alumni of the Cowell Street Comprehensive who had not moved all that far from home, among them contemporaries of The Stalagmites. Her late husband, Baxter Moore, and I both went to Harvard, and we ran into each other at alumni functions; he was in the shipping business. → See alumnus ....
