Time for a pop quiz!” you hear your English teacher announce. The whole class groans. But where does this word come from? And could its etymology actually get you out of a quiz? (Probably not, unless your teacher is in a very, very, very good mood.)
It’s important to mention that the alleged origin of the word quiz is doubtful at best (don’t mention that to your teacher though, unless you want to undo all the progress you just made). Legend has it that a Dublin theater-owner (either Daly or Daley depending on the source) made a bet sometime in the late 1700s that he could create a new word and make it widely used within a single day. The next logical step was, of course, to hire a group of street urchins to graffiti “QUIZ” across the entire city.
The next day, the whole city was talking about it (standards were low before sliced bread was invented). What did it mean? Was it some kind of joke? A test? And that confusion is where we get the meaning of “quiz” we still use today. Figures.
To this day, we don’t know how much money Daly made in his bet. For his sake, I hope it was a decent amount.
So what’s your response to your teacher’s announcement? Well, you could say something about the meaning of quiz being entirely based on how some people in Dublin interpreted mysterious graffiti in the eighteenth century, thus making it irrelevant and inapplicable to modern everyday life. Or you could just book it out of the classroom. Either way, let me know how it goes.