quizzes posts
Pop quiz: 10 word sources
Have you ever noticed that the longer you look at any word the stranger it begins to seem? The other day a squirrel ran in front of my car, and I thought “Squirrel is an odd English word — I wonder if it comes from the French.” That guess (a guess, because I couldn’t remember the French écureuil) turned out to be right (ultimately the word has a Greek origin, skiouros), but that was just luck. I wondered how people would do at identifying the origins of some of the odder words in English, and so I created this quiz. Select the best answer for the origin of each of the 10 words.
Posted: August 31st, 2009 under language, quizzes.
Comments: 2