WORD FOR THE DAY

Your word for today is: quiz, n.

quiz, n.

Pronunciation: Brit. /kwɪz/,  U.S. /kwɪz/
 
Forms:  17 quis,   17– quiz,   17– quizz now nonstandard,   18 quize Eng. regional (Lincs.).
 
Etymology:Origin unknown. In branch II. probably <  quiz v.1 Compare quoz n.
The source of quot. 1793 at sense 1b suggests that the word was regarded as unusual at an early date. An origin in public school slang may be suggested by the following:
 
1798  G. Colman Heir at Law iv. iii. 60 A gig? Umph! that's an Eton phrase—the Westminster call it Quiz.


The following anecdote is widely repeated, but cannot be confirmed. It apparently first appears in Smart (1836), but is omitted in the 1840 edition. The man in question is perhaps Richard Daly (1758–1813), Irish actor and (from 1780) theatre manager:
 
1836  B. H. Smart Walker Remodelled at Quiz, Daly, the manager of a Dublin playhouse, wagered that a word of no meaning should be the common talk and puzzle of the city in twenty-four hours; in the course of this time the letters Q, u, i, z were chalked or pasted on all the walls of Dublin with an effect that won the wager.
 
 I.  Senses relating to oddness or eccentricity. Now rare and arch.
 1.
 
a.  An odd or eccentric person; a person whose appearance is peculiar or ridiculous.
 
?1781  C. A. Burney Diary ?24 June in  F. Burney Early Diary (1889) II. 297 He's a droll quiz, and I rather like him.
 
1785 Span. Rivals 8 Ay, he's a queer Quis.
 
1793  in  W. Roberts Looker-on No. 54 (1794) II. 311 Some college cell, Where muzzing quizzes mutter monkish schemes.
 
1818  Ld. Dudley Let. 14 Feb. (1840) 196 Nor are we by any means such quizzes or such bores as the wags pretend.
 
1852  Mrs. Smythies Bride Elect xiii, If she really means to marry that quiz for the sake of his thousands.
 
a1855  C. Brontë Professor (1857) I. iii. 50 He was not odd—no quiz.
 
1879  J. Planché Telemachus iii. 185 Who's his friend I wonder? Some queer old quiz, who looks as black as thunder.
 
1982  R. Davies High Spirits xv. 160 Consider the Pleasure Principle and dry your eyes. You look a perfect Quiz.
 
†b.  With of. A peculiar or ridiculous thing. Obs.
 
1793  C. Dibdin Etymol. of Quiz 4 But lest, having chaunted of quizzes so long, You begin to think this but a quiz of a song.
 
1794  R. Cumberland Box-lobby Challenge i. ii. 9 Which now is of the longest standing in the family, you, or that damn'd old quiz of a coat you are dusting?
 
1806  A. Seward Let. 26 Mar. in  W. Partington Private Letter-bks. Sir Walter Scott (1930) 
257 Possibly this quiz of a poem may obtain sale and circulation amongst the Methodists.
 
a1817  J. Austen Northanger Abbey (1818) I. vii. 96 Where did you get that quiz of a hat?
 
†2.  = bandalore n. Obs.
 
1792 Sequel Adventures Munchausen xi. 178 She darted and recoiled the quizzes in her right and left hand.
 
a1833  T. Moore in Mem. (1853) I. 12 The Duke..was, I recollect, playing with one of those toys called quizzes.
 
a1833  T. Moore Mem. (1853) I. 11 A certain toy very fashionable about the year 1789 or 
1790 called in French a ‘bandalore’ and in English a ‘quiz’.
 
 II.  Senses relating to mockery or questioning. 
 3.
 
a.  A practical joke; a hoax, a piece of mockery or banter; a witticism.
 
1795 Kentish Reg. III. 310 Whether its better in the mind to suffer the laughes and quizzes of the powder'd pates.
 
1801  J. Minshull Rural Felicity 65 Then join in the chorus, no fear it is said, To laugh at the point where the quiz was play'd By a young wag and a comely young blade.
 
1805  S. J. Pratt Harvest Home III. 133 And call the scheme - a Nullity, Poetic folly, quiz, and trope, And for th'Inventor vote a Rope.
 
1826  Scott Jrnl. 11 Feb. (1939) 100, I should have thought the thing a quiz, but that the novel was real.
 
1835  N. P. Willis Pencillings II. lxiv. 189 Whipping in with a quiz or a witticism whenever he could get an opportunity.
 
1840  T. Hood Up Rhine 103 Frank whispered that he was travelling for Rundell and Bridge, but I suspect that was only a quiz.
 
1870  J. R. Green Lett. (1901) iii. 254 What a taste for a quiz a Professorship seems to develop.
 
1898  W. S. Gilbert Bab Ballads 416 But no; resolved to have her quiz, The lady held her own—and his.
 
1966  L. MacNeice Coll. Poems (1979) 398 Quiz and quirk, Riddle and slapstick, kept the dark at bay.
 
†b.  The action of mocking someone or something. Also: the action of examining something closely (rare). Obs.
 
1819 Quizzical Gaz. No. 5/1, The Editor..declares this the only article in the Paper devoid of Quiz.
 
1841  T. Hood Tale of Trumpet iii, in New Monthly Mag. Sept. 157 You may join the genteelest party that is, And enjoy all the scandal, and gossip, and quiz.
 
1857  ‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue 42 Go to pigeon fancery, And know each breed by quiz of eye.
 
 4.  A person who ridicules or who engages in banter; a wit; a mocker; a practical joker.
 
1797 Quiz No. 13. 85 Now, gentlemen, as you have taken to yourselves the name of Quizzes, I request to know [etc.].
 
1801 Port Folio 17 Oct. 335/2 A barber once asking an old misanthropical quiz, what could be the reason that women had no beards? ‘Lend me the pen,’ said surly, ‘and I will write it you down.’
 
1836 Quiz No. 1. 4/2 A true Quiz is imperturbable: therefore is Talleyrand the Prince of Quizzers.
 
1843  Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit (1844) ix. 101 ‘What a wicked girl you are!’ cried Mrs. Todgers, embracing her with great affection. ‘You're quite a quiz I do declare!’
 
1899 Eng. Hist. Rev. Apr. 36 Braving the ridicule with which it pleased the quizzes of the day to asperse the husband chosen for her.
 
1935  R. A. Knox Barchester Pilgrimage ii. 57 The mother was a quiz; she quizzed her son, instead of rebuking him, when he was ill-behaved.
 
 5.
 
 a.  A set of questions used to test knowledge or to promote learning; spec. (orig. and chiefly N. Amer.) a short oral or written examination given by a teacher.
 
pop quiz: see as main entry.
 
1867  W. James Let. 26 Dec. in  R. B. Perry Thought & Char. W. James (1935) I. xiv. 254 Occasional review articles, etc., perhaps giving ‘quizzes’ in anatomy and physiology..may help along.
 
1888 Amer. Law Reg. n.s. 36 417 The class-room exercise is neither a recitation nor a lecture. It would more properly be called a conference or quiz.
 
1895  J. W. Brown in Proc. 14th Convent. Instruct. Deaf 314 My first lesson should be in the form of a quiz.
 
1906 Elem. School Teacher 6 201 This period should usually take the form of a ‘quiz’, both teacher and class asking and answering questions.
 
1907 Springfield(Mass.)Weekly Republican 7 Feb. 16 For the food chemists the quiz included a study of both French and German.
 
1931  H F. Pringle Theodore Roosevelt i. xvi. 228 This distinguished jurist agreed to lend books and give him a quiz each Saturday.
 
1957 Economist 19 Oct. 202 To what kind of searching test should an advertiser subject a prospective agent? A friendly personal quiz?
 
1973 Houston Chron. 14 Oct. (Texas Mag) 16/4 The teacher erased the board, wrote up new multiplication problems, distributed paper and drilled for the next day's quiz.
 
1992 Equinox Aug. 96/1 They are raising the unholy ruckus that is the natural right of anyone spending a perfect summer away from home, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest social studies quiz and parental curfew.
 
2005  E. Alphin Perfect Shot 92 Some students used the extra time to study for a quiz.
 
 b.  A set of questions provided as an entertainment; spec. a series of questions asked of competing individuals or teams, and often divided into rounds. Now chiefly Brit.
 
pub quiz: see pub quiz n. at pub n.1 Compounds 2.
 
1929 Oakland Tribune 26 Apr. 18c/5 No one will know until the judges get together at the end as the ‘best’ or ‘official solutions’ are picked from those solutions sent in by the participants in the Quiz.
 
1941 Scribner's Commentator Feb. 86  (heading) Quiz by the Quiz kids.
 
1941  L. MacNeice Poetry of Yeats i. 114 We must..in literary criticism be careful not to write as if we were solving a popular Quiz—as if there were a stock set of answers.
 
1977 Evening Post(Nottingham) 24 Jan. 7/9 Tuxford Young Farmers A team defeated their B team in the third round of the county Inter-Club Quiz to reach the semi-finals.
 
1990 Daily Star 23 Oct. 17/1 It's the sport's quiz that even people who hate sport will watch.
 
1997  M. Schor Wet ii. 96 The answer to ‘What happens ten months of the year in the art world?’ is printed upside down, like a newspaper quiz.
 
2001 Spectator 21 Apr. 53 Any quiz in which someone has to say, ‘and the rules for this round are as follows’..has missed the point and will probably fail.
 
Compounds
 (In sense 5.) C1.
 
quiz compère n.
 
1959 Listener 28 May 958/3 A deed which earned what our Quiz compères insist on calling ‘a big hand’.
 
2006 Evening Standard (Nexis) 31 Aug. b14 ‘We are oversubscribed for the evening,’ says the quiz compere.
 
quiz game n.
 
1928 Jrnl. Relig. 8 335 As a manual for a quiz game the book may have some use; as a manual of religious education it is an excellent illustration of what religious education is not.
 
1945 East Jefferson Sentinel(Edgewater, Colorado) 26 July 5/4 Mrs Critchfield, chairman and hostess, then conducted three quiz games.
 
2006 Daily Mail (Nexis) 24 Sept. (Business) Safeguards to protect television quiz game players from becoming addicted and running up huge bills failed when put to the test by Financial Mail.
 
quiz paper n.
 
1914  D. R. Campbell Proving Virginia xiii. 226 The black-robed Seniors assembled..to perform the last holy rites over their antique manuscripts, quiz papers, precious testimonials of mid-night toil.
 
1936  L. C. Douglas White Banners viii. 163 It was not easy to concentrate on classroom lectures, student interviews, quiz-papers, and seminars.
 
2006 Herald Express(Torquay) (Nexis) 2 Jan. 22 Members unwrapped the crackers and used the serviette for the meal. There was a quiz paper on each table providing amusement.
 
quiz party n.
 
1949  ‘J. Tey’ Brat Farrar vi. 47 He..had always come to an examination paper with the same faint pleasure that an addict brings to a quiz party.
 
1991  T. A. Delong Quiz Craze ii. 7 Station KMTR in Hollywood took advantage of this quiz-book craze by urging people to organize ‘quiz parties’ around their radio and entertain each other by calling out answers before the announcer did.
 
quiz programme n.
 
1936 Mansfield(Ohio)News 3 Oct. 5/1, 6:00—Quiz Program.
 
1972 Language 48 341 Elicitory question intonation..presupposes that there is information being withheld, and hence is easily associated with teachers or quiz-program M.C.'s.
 
2005 New Statesman 30 May 39/2 [On television] reality shows, amateur dancing and quiz programmes have replaced any sense of public responsibility.for supplying an audience with properly funded creative initiatives.
 
quiz show n.
 
1938 Ada(Okla.)Evening News 29 Apr. 2/5, 6:45—(MBS) News Testers. Conducted by Leonard M. Leonard; audience participation quiz show.
 
1954  G. Marx Let. 16 Aug. (1967) 93 The gibbering idiots on panel shows, quiz shows, and other half hours of tripe.
 
1998 Independent 9 Mar. ii. 12/1 Telly Addicts. More saddos reach for the button in this long-running, Noel Edmonds-centred quiz show.
 
quiz team n.
 
1945 Times 21 Dec. 6/1  (television listing) 7.10. Quiz Team.
 
1957  R. Hoggart Uses of Literacy vi. 155 The typically outspoken member in a radio quiz-team represents both the old-style ‘card’ and this modern allegorical figure, the ‘idiosyncratic hero’.
 
1976 Lancs. Evening Post 7 Dec. 2/4 Preston's BBC Radio 2 quiz team to meet Blackpool's in a broadcast competition.
 
1998  A. Chaudhuri Freedom Song (1999) 92 This boyhood, of private tutorials, practising maths questions from past question papers, of being in the school quiz team,..none of it would last long.
 
quiz-viewer n.
 
1959 New Statesman 24 Jan. 107/2 Its audience was almost certainly enlarged this week by the unconscious sadism, latent in all quiz-viewers, which such entertainments harmlessly release and satisfy.
 
1995  B. R. Clifford et al.  Television & Children vii. 186 Medium to heavy quiz viewers outperformed light viewers.
 
quiz-type adj.
 
1940 Ogden(Utah)Standard-Examiner 11 Feb. 13a/5 The program is a new quiz type show in which the actors illustrate a difficult predicament, then persons chosen from the studio audience are asked to tell how they'd get out of it.
 
1963 Times 19 Jan. 4/6 It was Sound, after all, which invented several other quiz, or quiz-type, programmes.
 
2006 Salt Lake Tribune (Nexis) 22 Apr., Everyone's feelings about other members of the former Casaya tribe came out in the quiz-type reward challenge.
 
C2.
 
quiz kid n. orig. and chiefly U.S. (a) (with capital initials) a child who participated in Quiz Kids, a radio and (later) television quiz show (see quot. 19401); (b) (in extended use) an ostentatiously intelligent person, esp. a young one.
 
[1940 Chicago Tribune 28 June 22/2 A new radio program, ‘Quiz Kids’..has its first airing tonight... Some bright boys and girls were rounded up and a recording made of their answers to a number of questions fired at them.]
 
1940 Chicago Tribune 28 June 22/3 Say, who do you think I am—a Quiz Kid?
 
1959 Encounter July 38/2 He [sc. Lord Northcliffe] was a true child of the age—the first and greatest of all quiz-kids.
 
1972 Times 19 Oct. 10/3 He suppresses his taste for swanky, quiz-kids words (telangiectatic, ichor, fastigiate).
 
1984 Los Angeles Times 25 Nov. vii. 1/2 She took over the management of our money, charming bank clerks and handling exchange rates with the..quiz-kid mind of an algebra student.
 
2001  W. O'Shaughnessy It All comes back to me Now 29 Andy's bio doesn't tell us, ladies and gentlemen, that he was a Quiz Kid on the coast-to-coast radio program.
 
 quizmaster n. †(a) N. Amer. a teacher or other person giving a quiz to students (obs.); (b) chiefly Brit. a person who presides over a quiz game, esp. on radio or television; = question master n. at question n. Compounds 4.
 
1878 Med. & Surg. Reporter 21 Dec. 541/2 This is a sort of vest-pocket compendium of chemistry, arranged in the form of question and answer, so that the student can readily post himself on the inquiries likely to be propounded to him by the quiz master or the professor.
 
1889 Cent. Dict., Quiz-master, the teacher or leader of a quiz-class.
 
1949 Radio Times 15 July 15/1 Round Britain Quiz... Quiz-Master, Gilbert Harding.
 
1964  C. Barber Ling. Change Present-day Eng. ii. 20 B.B.C. announcers may be less influential than comedians, quizmasters, compères, and ‘personalities’.
 
1996 Sunday Tel.(Sydney) 18 Aug. 15/1 The appointment of the former Sale Of The Century quizmaster has proven a perilous investment for Seven.

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