Q 01/05

'Knight' sounds noble, but its Old English ancestor, cniht, first named which humbler figure?

A) A shepherd

B) A blacksmith

C) A servant

D) A ploughman

Answer · why

C) A servant

A servant: cniht meant a boy or attendant, and its German cousin Knecht still means a servant. Only around 1100 did the English word come to mean a lo...

Q 02/05

Under which ruler are the first knights generally said to have appeared, in the 8th century?

A) William the Conqueror

B) Otto the Great

C) Alfred the Great

D) Charlemagne

Answer · why

D) Charlemagne

Charlemagne's Frankish armies leaned on mounted warriors, and he rewarded the best with grants of land called benefices. Land in exchange for fighting...

Q 03/05

Which piece of riding gear did historian Lynn White Jr. claim in 1962 had created the feudal knight?

A) The curb bit

B) The high-cantled saddle

C) The horseshoe

D) The stirrup

Answer · why

D) The stirrup

The stirrup, White argued, let a lancer ride home a charge without being thrown, and so made the armoured knight possible. Historians have fought over...

Q 04/05

What was the medieval Latin word for a knight?

A) Baro

B) Comes

C) Miles

D) Dux

Answer · why

C) Miles

Miles meant an ordinary soldier, usually on foot, to the Romans, and it gives us the word military. Medieval scribes reused it for the mounted knight ...

Q 05/05

Which Spanish word for a gentleman began, like the French chevalier, by meaning a horseman?

A) Hidalgo

B) Señor

C) Caballero

D) Grande

Answer · why

C) Caballero

Caballero, like chevalier and chivalry, goes back to caballus, Latin slang for a nag or pack-horse that pushed aside the classical equus. A stable wor...