Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

The scores of etymologists who have attempted to locate the origin of the word quiz have come up empty-handed. This term, meaning simply "a short test", has puzzled word watchers since it appeared in print in the late 18th century.

A story often associated with the coinage of the word quiz involves a Dublin Ireland theater manager named James Daly, who boasted that he could invent a meaningless word and make it instantly popular. Daly hired Dublin schoolboys to chalk his nonsense word on every chalkable surface in the city. The word was quiz, and within days Dublin was abuzz with speculations of its meaning. This makes a good story, but no written authentication for the tale exists.

More scholarly speculations come from lexicographer John Ayto, editor of Dictionary of Word Origins. Ayto writes that in Britain in the late 1900s, quiz, the noun, meant "odd person"; the verb meant "make fun of." Later, quiz meant "look at mockingly or questioningly through a monocle"; this action may have inspired the later meaning "to interrogate, test."

The Dictionary of Word Origins also observes that quiz has been associated with the word inquisitive and the Latin interrogative quis?, "who, what?."

In the 1940s, the word gained new life with the introduction of popular radio and television quiz shows. These programs inspired the short-lived noun quizee, "contestant on a television quiz program".

Radio Script > Quiz