As the school year comes to a close, students across the country find themselves in a whirlwind of final exams, projects and quizzes to demonstrate how much they have learned. If they are taking a quiz on 19th century English novels, they (like me) may have found themselves stumped at the use of the word “quiz.” Such as in the sentence, “Where did you get that quiz of a hat?” from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. So, what exactly is a quiz?
The question may seem obvious. A quiz is a short test, but this is not the first definition. The third definition in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “the act or action of quizzing, specifically a short oral or written test.” In the verb form “to quiz” is “to question someone closely.” This is almost exclusively how we use the word today. This usage appears to have begun in the mid-1800s and may have arisen from words such as “inquisitive” or “question.” Another theory is that it came from a combining and shortening of the Latin question, “Qui es?” or “Who are you?” This would have been the first question asked in an oral exam.
The first two definitions for quiz in the dictionary reveal a very different meaning. The first definition is an “eccentric person” and the second is “practical joke.” In the 1700s, quiz could mean anything odd, peculiar or confusing. It could also be used as a pejorative for something or someone you simply did not like. The origin of the word is unclear though it may have derived from the word inquisitive.
One popular tale is that it started as a bet with a Dublin theater manager to create a word who then plastered the letters Q U I Z all over town. While a great story, it is likely untrue and did not appear in writing until several decades later. An article in The London Magazine in 1783 suggests that quiz was already in common usage as college slang before the theater manager origin story.
Quiz is far from being the only word to experience such drastic changes in definition. Bully used to mean sweetheart. Nervous once meant sinewy or strong. And nice originally referred to someone who was foolish. While the etymology of many words can be traced neatly through time and make logical sense, we will just have to accept that the origin of some words is a bit of a quiz.
Crystal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy or to stump your in-laws.
