It all began in the late 18th century with a Dublin theater proprietor named James Daly. A real sucker for bets, and not an adversary of a little gossip, Daly would do almost anything if it involved a test of nerves and a bit of boldness. Naturally, when he was challenged to add a word to the English language in a humble 24 hours, he accepted and immediately hired men to cover the entirety of Dublin with posters and graffiti — any form of public display that broadcasted his very own creative, nonsensical brainchild: "quiz."
By the next day, the strange new word was the talk of the town. And soon enough, the word was being used by English speakers everywhere. James Daly, old chap, had made up his own word.
Or so the story goes. But not without dissent. Most etymologies attribute the story to mere rumor because the alleged timing of the word's dissemination is incompatible with its recorded history. The James Daly story, first recorded in 1836, dates Daly's bet back to 1791. But Daly's "new" word, "quiz," was actually first found in writing much earlier, in 1782.
For all of the fuss surrounding the rumor, though, the true origin of the word remains a mystery. The 1782 source that eliminates the possibility of the rumor's legitimacy used the word as a sort of slang term for a queer or eccentric person. "He's a droll quiz, but I rather like him," Fanny Burney, the English playwright, writes in her diaries. Yet she hardly explains from where the previously unrecorded word suddenly appeared.
The word soon began to expand — first as an adjective meaning odd; then as a verb meaning to tease or ridicule; and later as a noun meaning either a practical joke or one who quizzes, a jester.
How we got to our contemporary meaning of "quiz" from "practical joke" hardly seems to need further explanation. But in truth, the archaic meaning from 1782 — as well as all of its offshoots — has just about nothing to do with the American word "quiz" we use today. Any legacy the British word managed to preserve remains only within another word of ours, "quizzical," meaning — much like its predecessor — odd or comical.
The contemporary "quiz," as in a short test, most likely comes from one kind of test in particular: those given in Latin class.
Typically, oral Latin quizzes in grammar school would start out with the question, "Qui es?" (Who are you?). "Qui es" eventually got pushed together to form "quies" and later adopted the edgier z we use today. Pretty simple.
So who is the gossip guy (or girl) behind Daly's tale? As seems to be the case with most gossip people, he doesn't reveal his identity easily.
Perhaps Daly really did exist and, not an avid reader of Burney, thought his word was a masterpiece of his own making. Or perhaps our gossiper had a bet of his own, one to spread not a word but a nonsensical story about a word. Who knows?
But either the story behind the meta−bet involved an undeniable double doggy dare, or whoever started the rumor was a little James Daly himself — because despite the fable's fantasy roots, it managed to spread equally as well as the one of which it tells the story.
After all, for a minute up there, you all fell for it.
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Romy Oltuski is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Romy.Oltuski@tufts.edu.
