page_title: Phi Beta Kappa
section_title: Secret fraternal society
hierarchical_section_title: Phi Beta Kappa / History / Secret fraternal society
caption_attribution_description: English: Phi Beta Kappa headquarters at 1606 New Hampshire Avenue, NW in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
context_page_description: The Phi Beta Kappa Society is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and is often described as its most prestigious one, owing to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and to induct the most outstanding students of arts and sciences at American colleges and universities. It was founded at the College of William and Mary on December 5, 1776 as the first collegiate Greek-letter fraternity and was among the earliest collegiate fraternal societies.
  Phi Beta Kappa stands for Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης, which means "Love of learning [lit. wisdom] is the guide [lit. helmsman] of life".
context_section_description: The new society was intended to be "purely of domestic manufacture, without any connection whatever with anything European, either English or German."  The founders of Phi Beta Kappa declared that the society was formed for congeniality and to promote good fellowship, with "friendship as its basis and benevolence and literature as its pillars."
  Like the older, Latin-letter fraternities, the Phi Beta Kappa was a secret society.  To protect its members and to instill a sense of solidarity, each had the essential attributes of most modern fraternities:  an oath of secrecy, a badge (or token) and a diploma (or certificate) of membership, mottoes (in the case of the Phi Beta Kappa, in Greek rather than in Latin), a ritual of initiation, a handclasp of recognition; to these, the Phi Beta Kappa would soon add another attribute, branches or "chapters" at other colleges.  The new society was given the motto, Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης or in Latin letters Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs, which means in English Love of learning is the guide of life. Greek was chosen, because Greek was in Roman times the language of science like Latin in medieval times.
  Later, in May 1777, a new sign of recognition was devised: "a salutation of the clasp of the hands, together with an immediate stroke across the mouth with the back of the same hand, and a return with the hand used by the saluted".  This new complex of gestures was created to allow the mutual recognition of members "in any foreign country or place."
  Before the British invasion of Virginia forced the temporary closure of the College of William and Mary and disbandment of the Phi Beta Kappa there early in 1781, Elisha Parmelee, an alumnus of Yale College and Harvard College, passed through Williamsburg and took charters from the Phi Beta Kappa to establish branches of the society at these schools.  A second chapter was founded at Yale College in late 1780; a third, at Harvard College in 1781; and a fourth, at Dartmouth College in 1787.
caption: The Phi Beta Kappa Society National Headquarters located in the historic Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
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