Dominus has been collecting material for some time now to be eventually turned into an online etymology quiz. The general idea behind the quiz is to give people an idea of which kinds of etymology are likely to be true and which aren't, rather than to trick people. To that end, although the quiz includes spurious etymologies, it never lies about the meanings of roots; if a quiz item claims that a given word comes from a given root, then that root exists and has the stated meaning even if the given word doesn't really come from that root. (Note that explanations to connect the root to the word may be entirely bogus.)<\/p>\r\n
Here are a couple dozen quiz items, some contributed by me and some by Dominus, and a few (indirectly) by others. Longtime readers may notice that I've given the answers to some of these in earlier columns. The best quiz items are those which propose two or more alternate etymologies, but most of the items below are simple true\/false questions.<\/p>\r\n
There is a third class of quiz items which are really hard: the ones that require you to sort a set of words into cognate groups (that is, into groups of words which are related to each other). Unfortunately I'm out of time and out of space this week, so I'm not going to include any such items; you'll just have to wait for Dominus' online version of the quiz, or a future column.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Ampersand<\/i> is from Amper's and<\/i>, because someone named Amper was the first one to write \"Et\" in that particular form. (JEH, from Jere7my Tho?rpe)<\/p>\r\n
Azure<\/i> is related to lapis lazuli<\/i>. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Buckaroo<\/i> (cowboy) is related to vaccine<\/i> by way of Latin vacca<\/i> (cow). (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Caliber<\/i> (the diameter of a bullet) is from Arabic qalib<\/i> (a shoemaker's last). (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Chapel<\/i> is from Latin cappa<\/i>, cloak, because a chapel was built to house the cloak of St. Martin of Tours. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Chauvinism<\/i> is from Nicholas Chauvin, a fictional patriotic French soldier (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Cloud-cuckoo-land<\/i> is a direct translation from the Greek nephelokokkygia<\/i>. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Copper<\/i> (metal) is from Latin Cuprum<\/i>, from Classical Greek Kupros<\/i> (Cyprus), the island to which it is native. (MJD)<\/p>\r\n
Cypress<\/i> (tree) is from Latin Cuprum<\/i>, from Classical Greek Kupros<\/i> (Cyprus), the island to which it is native. (MJD)<\/p>\r\n
Counsel<\/i> is from the same root as council<\/i>.<\/p>\r\n
Corduroy<\/i> is from the French cour du roi<\/i>, \"court of the king,\" because that's where it was first worn. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Denim<\/i> originally came from Nimes, France, and was called serge de Nimes<\/i>. (MJD)<\/p>
\r\n<\/p>
Don<\/i> and doff<\/i> are related to on<\/i> and off<\/i>, respectively. (MJD)<\/p>\r\n
Egregious<\/i> is related to gregarious<\/i> by way of Latin grex<\/i> (herd). (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Galvanize<\/i> is named after Luigi Galvani, Italian physician and physicist. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Gargle<\/i> is cognate with gargoyle<\/i>. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Garlic<\/i> is from gar<\/i> (spear, because of its spear-shaped leaves, akin to the spear-shaped gar<\/i> fish) + lic<\/i> (leek, because it's like a leek). (MJD)<\/p>\r\n
Journal<\/i> derives from the same root as diary<\/i>. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Maudlin<\/i> derives from Mary Magdalene<\/i>, often depicted as crying. (from Jon Carroll)<\/p>\r\n
Minimum<\/i> is cognate with miniature<\/i>. (MJD?)<\/p>\r\n
Minister<\/i> is from Latin minister<\/i> (servant). (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Minister<\/i> is related to Latin minor<\/i>; majesty<\/i> and magister<\/i> are related to Latin major<\/i>. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Mustard<\/i> is related to musty<\/i>. (MJD)<\/p>\r\n
Slogan<\/i> is from a Gaelic battle-cry, sluagh-ghairm<\/i>. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Squash<\/i> (to smash) means to cause to resemble the messy, pulpy insides of the squash plant. (MJD)<\/p>\r\n
Toll<\/i> is from Latin tollis<\/i>, to take away. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Truce<\/i> is related to truculent<\/i>. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Vanilla<\/i> derives from Latin vagina<\/i> (sheath). (JEH)<\/p>\r\n
Glans<\/i> is Latin for acorn<\/i>. (MJD)<\/p>\r\n
Vicar<\/i> is related to vicarious<\/i>. (JEH)<\/p>\r\n\r\nMultiple choice<\/h3>\r\n
Alimony<\/i> is related to:
\r\n A. Alimentary<\/i>
\r\n B. Ailment<\/i>
\r\n C. Money<\/i>
\r\n D. None of the above<\/p>\r\n
Baguette<\/i> is named that because:
\r\n A. It comes in a bag<\/i>
\r\n B. It's related to bagel<\/i>
\r\n C. It's French for \"rod\"
\r\n D. It's a mere trifle (related to bagatelle<\/i>)<\/p>\r\n
Gamut<\/i> is:
\r\n A. From gamma<\/i> and ut<\/i>, two names for notes; denoted the whole musical scale
\r\n B. Related to game<\/i>
\r\n C. From gammon<\/i> and mutton<\/i>; denoted the whole range of meats
\r\n D. Related to gamete<\/i><\/p>\r\n
Hecatomb<\/i> (a large-scale slaughter) is from:
\r\n A. Hect-<\/i> (100) + tomb<\/i> (tomb): 100 tombs.
\r\n B. Hekaton<\/i> (100) + bous<\/i> (ox): sacrificial slaughter of 100 oxen
\r\n C. None of the above<\/p>\r\n
Honcho<\/i> is from:
\r\n A. Japanese
\r\n B. Spanish
\r\n C. Algonquian<\/p>\r\n
Peccary<\/i> (a kind of wild pig) derives from:
\r\n A. Latin peccata<\/i> (sins)
\r\n B. Latin pecu<\/i> (cattle)
\r\n C. A Carib word<\/p>\r\n
Typhoon<\/i> is from:
\r\n A. Cantonese tai fung<\/i> (enormous wind: tai<\/i> (very big) + fung<\/i> (wind))
\r\n B. Urdu tufan<\/i> (violent storm), ultimately from tafa<\/i> (to turn around)
\r\n C. Greek Typhon<\/i>, an enormous monster, son of Typhoeus (father of the winds)<\/p>\r\n
Whiskey<\/i> is called that because:
\r\n A. The mash was originally stirred with a whisk
\r\n B. It's from Irish Gaelic uisce beathadh<\/i> (water of life)<\/p>\r\n
All of the answers to the above questions are clustered together on the answers page<\/a>; don't peek until you've answered all you're going to.<\/p>\r\n Dominus is interested in more contributions to the quiz. If you have some (particularly if you have plausible-sounding but false etymologies for reasonably common words), send them to him at\r\nmjd-www-equiz@plover.com<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n I'm using a new authoring tool for this week's column; please let me know if you encounter any weirdnesses in displaying the HTML.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5-lllowercase-3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2672"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3480,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672\/revisions\/3480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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