Career Trivia
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110 free Career trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
What does an actuary actually do all day? Who is the best boy on a film set, and what makes a cordwainer different from a cobbler? This set of career trivia questions has 110 free questions with answers about jobs, trades and professions: the medieval crafts whose names survive as surnames, the medical specialties nobody can keep straight, the kitchen brigade, the film crew, the skilled trades, and the exams that stand between a student and a licence. It is written for career-day classes, work icebreakers and pub quiz rounds, and it mixes easy questions anyone can guess with harder ones about who studies what and how long qualifying takes. Every question names a real occupation and the explanation adds a detail worth remembering about it. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the occupation or field, and each question links to the page that establishes it.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does a farrier do?
Trims horses' hooves and fits horseshoes
Trims horses' hooves and fits horseshoes: the farrier's name comes from the Latin ferrum, iron, because shoeing horses was once a blacksmith's job.
Q 02What does a cooper make?
Wooden barrels and casks
Wooden barrels and casks: a cooper's workshop is called a cooperage, and the trade gave English the surname Cooper.
Q 03What did a fletcher traditionally do?
Attach feathers to arrows
Attach feathers to arrows: fletcher comes from the Old French fleche, arrow, and the trade survives in the surname Fletcher.
Q 04By British tradition a cordwainer made new shoes, while which tradesman was only allowed to repair them?
A cobbler
A cobbler was restricted to mending, and often barred by law from making shoes, while the cordwainer, named for the fine leather of Cordoba in Spain, worked only in new leather.
Q 05The wright in wheelwright, shipwright and playwright comes from an Old English word meaning what?
Worker
Worker: wright comes from the Old English wryhta, a worker or maker, which is why a playwright is spelled like a wheelwright and not like a writer.
Q 06A milliner makes and sells what?
Hats
Hats: milliner probably began as Milaner, a merchant from Milan, the Italian city famed for its bonnets, ribbons and other finery.
Q 07A chandler in a medieval household was responsible for what?
Wax and candles
Wax and candles: a chandler ran a great household's lighting, and the word later widened to dealers in provisions, hence the ship's chandler who supplies boats.
Q 08In British English, what does a haberdasher sell?
Buttons, ribbons, zips and sewing supplies
Buttons, ribbons, zips and sewing supplies fill a British haberdasher's shelves, but in America the word came to mean a men's outfitter, like the Kansas City shop Harry Truman ran before politics.
Q 09A luthier builds or repairs what?
String instruments
String instruments: luthier comes from luth, the French for lute, and the word spread from lute makers to the builders of violins and guitars.
Q 10What is a perfumer sometimes affectionately called?
A nose
A nose, or nez in French, is the perfume trade's nickname for a perfumer, earned by the finely trained sense of smell that composing a fragrance demands.
Q 11An actuary is a professional who does what?
Measures and manages risk using mathematics
Measures and manages risk using mathematics: an actuary prices the insurance and pensions that pay out years ahead, though the word once meant only a clerk who kept records.
Q 12What is a horologist interested in?
Clocks, watches and timekeeping
Clocks, watches and timekeeping: horology comes from the Greek hora, hour, a root it shares with horoscope, literally a watcher of the hour of birth.
Q 13What is a lexicographer's job?
Compiling dictionaries
Q 21A podiatrist specializes in which part of the body?
The foot, ankle and lower limb
The foot, ankle and lower limb: podiatry joins the Greek for foot and physician, a newer name for what was long called chiropody, a word that mixes hand and foot.
Q 22Which eye-care professional is a medical doctor who can perform surgery?
An ophthalmologist
An ophthalmologist went to medical school, which is why eye surgery falls to them; an optometrist tests sight and prescribes lenses, and an optician only fits them.
Q 23An audiologist treats disorders of what?
Hearing and balance
Compiling dictionaries: in his own English dictionary Samuel Johnson defined a lexicographer as 'a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge'.
Q 14Which field is the study of insects, and is often confused with the study of word origins?
Entomology
Entomology comes from the Greek entomon, insect, literally 'cut in pieces', Aristotle's name for creatures with segmented bodies; etymology is the one about word origins.
Q 15What does an ornithologist study?
Birds
Birds: ornithology leans on amateurs, as in Audubon's Christmas Bird Count, begun in 1900 when an ornithologist proposed counting birds on Christmas Day instead of shooting them.
Q 16A cartographer makes what?
Maps
Maps: cartography goes back to the Latin charta, a sheet of paper, the same root that gives English the chart and, less obviously, the playing card.
Q 17A seismologist studies what?
Earthquakes
Earthquakes: seismology comes from the Greek seismos, a shaking, and its worldwide stations also listen for secret underground nuclear tests.
Q 18A meteorologist studies what?
The atmosphere and the weather
The atmosphere and the weather: to the Greeks a meteoron was any thing high in the air, so rain, wind and rainbows all counted as meteors before the word narrowed to shooting stars.
Q 19What does an epidemiologist study?
Patterns and causes of disease in populations
Patterns and causes of disease in populations: the classic case is John Snow tracing an 1854 London cholera outbreak to one Broad Street water pump, whose handle was then removed.
Q 20What does a phlebotomist do?
Draws blood from veins
Draws blood from veins: phlebotomy joins the Greek for vein and cutting, and for centuries it meant bloodletting as a cure rather than taking samples for tests.
Hearing and balance: the organs of both sit together in the inner ear, which is why the audiologist who tests hearing also investigates dizziness.
Q 24A dermatologist is a doctor of what?
The skin
The skin: derma is Greek for skin, and because hair and nails grow out of it, the dermatologist is their doctor too.
Q 25Geriatrics is the medical care of whom?
Older adults
Older adults: geriatrics was built in the 1900s from Greek roots for old age and healer, on the model of pediatrics, the medicine of life's other end.
Q 26What does an oncologist treat?
Cancer
Cancer: oncology comes from onkos, a Greek word for a tumour, while cancer itself is the Latin for crab, an animal that Greek physicians thought some tumours resembled.
Q 27Which surgical specialty covers the bladder, the kidneys and the male reproductive organs?
Urology
Urology operates on the urinary tract, kidneys included, while nephrology, named from the Greek nephros, kidney, treats kidney disease with medicine rather than the knife.
Q 28An anesthesiologist is responsible for what?
A patient's care before, during and after surgery
A patient's care before, during and after surgery is the anesthesiologist's job, and the name fits: anesthesia is Greek for 'without feeling', a word medicine took up when ether surgery arrived in 1846.
Q 29In North America, what is a new doctor's supervised hospital training after medical school called?
Residency
Residency: the name is literal, because nineteenth-century trainee doctors resided in the hospital's own dormitories while they worked.
Q 30"First, do no harm" is often attributed to which medical text, though it does not appear there?
The Hippocratic Oath
The Hippocratic Oath only promises to abstain from doing harm; the famous wording came later, and its closest ancient match sits in another Hippocratic work, Of the Epidemics.