140 free Etymology trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This etymology trivia quiz is about where words come from: the people, places, myths and foreign tongues hiding inside everyday English. The easy questions are the famous eponyms and loanwords: the earl behind the sandwich, the Czech play that gave us robot, the atoll that named the bikini, the Persian chess phrase behind checkmate and the goddess inside cereal. From there it gets harder: the Venetian forty days of quarantine, the mouse in muscle, the salt in salary, the fig-revealer sycophant, the painted porch of the Stoics, the Massachusetts governor turned gerrymander, the finance minister who became a silhouette, the Ottawa word behind chipmunk, the Taíno roots of hammock and barbecue, the Hindi origins of shampoo and pyjamas, the Yiddish glitch and the Japanese tycoon. There are also questions on the vocabulary of etymology itself: eponyms, portmanteaus, back-formations, folk etymology and loanwords. If you want the wider science of language, our Linguistics quiz covers that ground. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry for the word, person or place in question before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question.
30 of 140 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01From which Greek word meaning 'true sense' does 'etymology' derive?
Étymon
The suffix -logia denotes 'the study of'.
Q 02What is the term for a noun after which something is named, like Elizabeth I for the Elizabethan era?
Eponym
The Assyrians named each year after a high official as early as the second millennium BC.
Q 03Which author first used 'portmanteau' for a blended word like smog or motel?
Lewis Carroll
He used it in Through the Looking-Glass in 1871.
Q 04Who coined the term 'back-formation' in 1889, using 'to burgle' from 'burglar' as an example?
James Murray
He was the founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Q 05The word 'loanword' is itself what kind of borrowing?
A calque
Meanwhile 'calque' is a loanword from French.
Q 06Which 18th-century aristocrat gave his name to the sandwich?
John Montagu
He supposedly wanted to eat without leaving the gaming table.
Q 07The word 'boycott' comes from a land agent shunned in which country in 1880?
Ireland
Captain Charles Boycott worked for absentee landlord Lord Erne in County Mayo.
Q 08What does 'quarantine' literally mean, from the Venetian word quarantena?
Forty days
Ships had to isolate for that period during the Black Death.
Q 09In which language did the word 'robot' originate in the 1920s?
Czech
Karel Čapek used it in his play R.U.R.; the root robota means forced labour.
Q 10Which play introduced the word 'robot'?
R.U.R.
Its title stands for Rossum's Universal Robots.
Q 11Most reference works trace 'OK' to a late-1830s abbreviation fad in which city?
Boston
It stood for 'oll korrect', a jokey misspelling of 'all correct'.
Q 12The bikini was named after an atoll where what had happened four days earlier?
A public nuclear bomb test
Designer Louis Réard introduced it in July 1946.
Q 13The 'mate' in checkmate comes from a Persian phrase meaning what?
The king is helpless
Shāh māt, according to the Barnhart Etymological Dictionary.
Q 21Which mythological character is the origin of the term 'narcissism'?
Narcissus
He fell in love with his own reflection.
Q 22The mausoleum takes its name from the tomb of King Mausolus at which ancient city?
Halicarnassus
The tomb was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Q 23The word 'draconian' comes from a lawmaker of which ancient city?
Athens
Draco's 7th-century BC code imposed severe punishments.
Q 24The word 'ostracism' derives from what?
Q 14The word 'cereal' derives from which Roman goddess?
Ceres
She presided over grain crops and fertility.
Q 15The word 'panic' is a tribute to which ancient god?
Pan
The goat-legged god was said to cause sudden groundless fear.
Q 16January is named after which Roman god of beginnings?
Janus
The Saxons called it Wulf-monath, 'wolf month'.
Q 17Thursday takes its English name from which Old English god?
Thunor
Romance languages name the day after Jupiter instead.
Q 18The Old English name for Wednesday honoured which god?
Woden
He was known as Óðinn among the North Germanic peoples.
Q 19The word 'volcano' comes via an Italian island from which Roman god?
Vulcan
Vulcano is one of the Aeolian Islands.
Q 20The 'Atlantic Ocean' literally derives from what?
Sea of Atlas
Atlas was the Titan condemned to hold up the sky.
Pottery sherds used as voting tokens
Ostraka were used to vote citizens out of Athens.
Q 25The traditional etymology of 'sycophant' makes it a revealer of what?
Figs
From Greek sykos, 'fig', and phanēs, 'to show'.
Q 26The Greek root of 'sarcasm' means what?
To tear flesh
'Sarcastic' does not appear in English until 1695.
Q 27The philosophical term 'cynic' derives from the Greek for which animal?
Dog
The insult was thrown at the first Cynics for living on the streets.
Q 28Stoicism takes its name from what feature of the Athenian Agora?
A painted porch
Zeno of Citium and his followers gathered at the Stoa Poikile.
Q 29The word 'academy' ultimately derives from which Athenian hero?
Akademos
Plato's school met at the grove named for him.
Q 30'Muscle' comes from Latin musculus, the diminutive of what animal?
Mouse
A flexed biceps was thought to resemble the back of one.