Q 01/05

Which verb for putting off a task until later is built on the Latin word for 'tomorrow'?

A) Prevaricate

B) Procrastinate

C) Prognosticate

D) Perambulate

Answer · why

B) Procrastinate

Procrastinate comes from the Latin 'procrastinare', to put off till tomorrow. Coleridge, who knew his Latin, jokingly called a habitual delayer a 'tom...

Q 02/05

What does 'schadenfreude' mean, a German loanword one Victorian scholar thought fearful for a language to have?

A) Joy at others' misfortune

B) Longing for faraway places

C) Sadness about the world

D) Comfort in familiar things

Answer · why

A) Joy at others' misfortune

Joy at others' misfortune is the sense: the word joins the German for 'harm' and 'joy'. English has used it as a word of its own since the 1920s.

Q 03/05

Which word for a longing for the past was coined at the University of Basel as a medical term for homesickness?

A) Melancholia

B) Neuralgia

C) Hysteria

D) Nostalgia

Answer · why

D) Nostalgia

Nostalgia was coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer from the Greek for 'homecoming' and 'pain'. Doctors treated it as a real and sometimes fatal disease, a...

Q 04/05

Which reference work listing words of similar meaning takes its name from the Greek for 'treasure' or 'storehouse'?

A) Thesaurus

B) Concordance

C) Lexicon

D) Glossary

Answer · why

A) Thesaurus

Thesaurus is Greek for a treasure or storehouse, a label early dictionary makers liked for a 'treasury of words'. Roget's title of 1852 fixed its mode...

Q 05/05

What is 'serendipity', a word Horace Walpole coined from a Persian fairy tale about three princes?

A) A broken promise

B) A lucky discovery

C) A long-awaited reunion

D) A secret meeting

Answer · why

B) A lucky discovery

A lucky discovery is the idea: Walpole wrote in 1754 that the princes of Serendip kept finding things they were not looking for. Serendip is an old na...