The definition is College official — think senior university figure. For the wordplay, take every other letter ("absent now and again") from idle, vain, picking out the second, fourth, sixth, eighth characters: **iDlE vAiN**... Let me redo that without markdown bold: The definition is College official — think senior university figure. For the wordplay, take every other letter ("absent now and again") from idle, vain, and the alternate letters — D, E, A, N — spell it out nicely.