50 free Slang trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free slang trivia questions with answers. This slang trivia quiz digs into where the words we actually use came from: the Boston newspaper joke that produced OK, the dandies who were the first dudes, the jazz musician who made cool cool, the New Orleans rap that gave the dictionary bling, the flapper who was the bee's knees, the surfers and Valley girls, Cockney rhyming slang and Polari, Australia's 5,000 diminutives, the acronyms of the internet age (LOL, OMG, YOLO, FOMO), and the Gen Z and Gen Alpha words that dictionaries have been crowning word of the year: selfie, rizz, brain rot, skibidi. Some questions are easy for anyone who has been online this decade; others go back a century or more and will test people who read dictionary etymologies for fun. It suits a pub quiz language round, an ESL classroom or a family argument about whether anyone should still say groovy. Every answer has been checked against a dictionary or reference source, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01"OK" first appeared in print in 1839 as a jokey abbreviation of what?
Oll korrect
The Boston Morning Post was riding a fad for comic misspellings; Martin Van Buren's "Old Kinderhook" campaign spread it nationwide the next year.
Q 02Which US president's 1840 campaign nickname helped make "OK" a national word?
Martin Van Buren
His supporters said OK stood for Old Kinderhook, after his New York hometown; the word is now described as the most spoken on the planet.
Q 03When "dude" first appeared in print in 1883, what did it mean?
A fussily dressed man
Cowboys used it to sneer at city slickers, which is why a dude ranch is a ranch for tourists.
Q 04The modern slang sense of "cool" is credited to which jazz saxophonist?
Lester Young
The word travelled from African-American Vernacular English into jazz circles in the 1940s and never left.
Q 05"Bling bling" entered mainstream English after a 1999 single by which New Orleans rapper?
B.G.
The Cash Money track put the word in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary by 2002 and Merriam-Webster by 2006.
Q 06Which New York landmark is the most popular explanation for the 1906 fad phrase '23 skidoo'?
The Flatiron Building
Wind around the 23rd Street tower lifted skirts, and police supposedly told gawking men to skidoo.
Q 07"The bee's knees" and "the cat's meow" were expressions of approval from which decade's slang?
The 1920s
The flappers who used them also called an engagement ring a "handcuff" and said "I have to see a man about a dog" when buying whiskey.
Q 08"Groovy" comes from which world before hippies got hold of it?
Jazz
It described a tune's feel in 1920s jazz culture; its earliest recorded slang use is a 1941 episode of Fibber McGee and Molly.
Q 09Who sang the 'gag me with a spoon' phrases on Frank Zappa's 1982 'Valley Girl'?
His daughter Moon Unit
Valspeak's uptalk and "like" as a filler are now studied by linguists; Clueless cemented the stereotype in 1995.
Q 10In Cockney rhyming slang, what are a person's "plates of meat"?
Their feet
The rhyme is usually dropped in practice, so a Cockney climbs "the apples" (apples and pears, stairs).
Q 11"Use your ___" means use your head; the blank comes from rhyming slang for what?
Bread (loaf of bread)
Loaf of bread rhymes with head; the phrase escaped the East End and is now used by people who have never heard of rhyming slang.
Q 12What does a Cockney mean by a "Ruby Murray"?
A curry
The Northern Irish singer was huge in 1950s Britain; newer coinages include "Scooby" (Scooby-Doo) for a clue.
Q 13Traditionally, a true Cockney is someone born within earshot of which church's bells?
St Mary-le-Bow
The word itself comes from Middle English cokenay, a "cock's egg", once an insult for soft city folk.
Q 21The internet acronym LOL was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in which year?
2011
OMG and FYI went in at the same time; the French write mdr and Thais type 555, since five is pronounced "ha".
Q 22The earliest known use of "OMG" is in a 1917 letter to which politician?
Winston Churchill
Admiral John Fisher wrote it to Churchill, decades before anyone owned a modem.
Q 23Which rapper's 2011 song "The Motto" turned YOLO into a global catchphrase?
Drake
A Grateful Dead drummer had already named his ranch YOLO, and Drake later tried, without a trademark, to collect royalties.
Q 14Polari, the secret slang of British gay men, reached a mass audience through which 1960s BBC radio comedy?
Round the Horne
The characters Julian and Sandy popularised "bona" and "zhoosh"; use faded after homosexuality was partly decriminalised in 1967.
Q 15Which everyday British word for something dull or tacky is thought to come from Polari?
Naff
"Camp" is another Polari escapee; "vada" (look) and "eek" (face) stayed underground.
Q 16Roughly how many diminutives like arvo, servo and brekkie exist in Australian English?
Over 5,000
No other English dialect shortens words so enthusiastically; a bottle shop is a bottle-o and sunglasses are sunnies.
Q 17The Australian slang word "yakka", meaning hard work, was borrowed from where?
Yagara, an Aboriginal tongue
"Sheila" for a woman, by contrast, comes from the Irish name Síle.
Q 18What is a "dunny" to a Sydneysider?
A toilet
It comes from the old British word dunnekin; a "bogan" is roughly the Australian answer to a redneck.
Q 19In British English "pissed" usually means what?
Drunk
The American sense is annoyed; the two Englishes also disagree sharply on "fanny" and "rubber".
Q 20Ask for a "rubber" in an American office and you will most likely be understood to want what?
A condom
In Britain it is the thing on the end of a pencil, which has caused generations of confusion in classrooms.
Q 24The acronym FOMO was popularised by a 2004 article in the student magazine of which institution?
Harvard Business School
Patrick McGinnis's piece also coined FOBO, fear of better options; the antidote JOMO came later from blogger Anil Dash.
Q 25The -ie ending of "selfie", first used in a 2002 forum, is typical of which country's English?
Australia
The -ie ending is classic Australian; Oxford made it Word of the Year in 2013.
Q 26Oxford's 2015 Word of the Year was not a word at all. What was it?
The face-with-tears-of-joy emoji
The word emoji itself is Japanese for picture-character and has nothing to do with "emotion".
Q 27The Japanese word "emoji" literally combines "e" and "moji", meaning what?
Picture and character
Shigetaka Kurita drew the first 176 of them in 1999 for the NTT DoCoMo i-mode service.
Q 28Who proposed the sideways smiley :-) on a Carnegie Mellon bulletin board in September 1982?
Scott Fahlman
He suggested :-( at the same time, to mark posts that were not jokes.
Q 29"Rizz", Oxford's Word of the Year for 2023, is a shortening of which word?
Charisma
Streamer Kai Cenat popularised it in 2021 and later complained TikTok had butchered the meaning; Tom Holland admitting "limited rizz" sealed it.
Q 30Which streamer is credited with popularising "rizz" in 2021?
Kai Cenat
Variants followed fast: the Rizzler, the Rizz God, and "unspoken rizz" for charming someone without a word.