Quiz (Word of the Week)

So this week’s word is a fairly common word, one that you already know the meaning of and that’s only four letters long, so, scrabble score aside, what’s so interesting about the word quiz?

Well first of all, it started life meaning something somewhat different than it means now.

Now quiz is a noun or verb that means:-

• The act of questioning
• A set of questions to be answered, specifically a questionnaire, examination or a test of knowledge for entertainment between individuals or teams.

As a verb it means to question or interrogate. In North America it is used in relation to testing a class of students by asking questions needing short factual answers.

These meaning all started to appear round about the mid 19^th century, but the word quiz has been around since the late 18^th century when the meaning was slightly different. Back then quiz could mean the following:-

• an odd or eccentric person or a person of ridiculous appearance
• a person who makes practical jokes, a prankster.
• A practical joke or hoax. A piece of witticism or banter.

So the word has evolved over time. But there’s something else interesting about the word quiz. Way back when, I was reading a graphic novel called Preacher in which one of the characters relates the story about how the word quiz originated. The story went along these lines:

In 1791 a man called John Daly, who owned a theatre in Dublin made a bet that he could create a nonsense-word that people would start to use all over the city within 2 days. In order to win the bet he got theatre staff to go around Dublin that evening and write the word quiz on all the walls they could find. Of course the next day the word was on everyone’s lips as they all tried to work our where this sudden rash of graffiti had come from and what it meant and within a short period of time it became part of the language.

I originally assumed that this was an invented story, written by Garth Ennis the author of Preacher, but when I looked into it further I found out that although, disappointingly the story has generally been decided to be made up, it first appeared in a book in 1875 in a book called “Gleanings and Reminiscences”. Unfortunately there is evidence that the word was already in use before 1971 meaning an eccentric person. But still I think its interesting all the same.

So, quiz may be a mere, 4 letter word that everyone knows the meaning of these days, but it has a fascinating history and has changed along the way.

Sources:

Shorter Oxford Dictionary (2 volumes) 6th edition, 2007

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/196

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-qui1.htm

Further reading:

http://irishgothichorrorjournal.homestead.com/PreacherEnnisDillon.html
this is an interesting article about Preacher for anyone who wants to do some background reading :)

Von