Answers to the Quirky Quiz on the English Language

Here are the answers to our Quirky Quiz on the English Language.

1. (d) According to David Crystal in English as a Global Language (2003), "[A]bout a quarter of the world's population is already fluent or competent in English, and this figure is steadily growing--in the early 2000s that means around 1.5 billion people." See: Notes on English as a Global Language.


2. (d) English is spoken by upwards of 350 million people in urban areas of India. See: Hinglish.


3. (e) The director of editorial projects for the Oxford English Dictionary, Penny Silva, says that "English has official or special status in at least 75 countries (with a combined population of two billion people)."


4. (b) According to linguist Tom McArthur in The Oxford Guide to World English, "The form OK or okay is probably the most intensively and widely used (and borrowed) word in the history of the language."


5. (b) The list of 850 "core" words introduced in C.K. Ogden's book Basic English: A General Introduction With Rules and Grammar (1930) is still used today by some teachers of English as a Second Language. See: Basic English.


6. (c) The period of Modern English extends from the 1500s to the present day. Shakespeare wrote his plays between 1590 and 1613. See: Key Events in the History of the English Language.


7. (a) Honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) shows up in a speech by Costard in Shakespeare's comedy Love's Labour's Lost: "O, they have liv'd long on the almsbasket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus. Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon."


8. (c) A word derived from the same root as another word is a paronym (similar to the rhetorical figure of polypton). See: Name That -nym.


9. (e) The word palindrome (which refers to a word, phrase, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward) is an isogram--that is, a word in which no letters are repeated. See: Verbal Play.


10. (e) It can be typed using only the top row of keys on a standard keyboard.


11. (b) Published in 1604, Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall contained roughly 2,500 words, each matched with a synonym or brief definition. See: The Earliest English Dictionaries.


12. (a) Originally published in 1783, Webster's "Blue-Backed Speller" went on to sell nearly 100 million copies over the next century. See: An Introduction to Noah Webster.


13. (c) Both "a friend of Joan's" and "a client of Marlowe's" are double genitives. See: What Is a Double Genitive?


14. (c) In his review article "Authority and American Usage," Wallace wrote, "There are lots of epithets for people like this--Grammar Nazis, Usage Nerds, Syntax Snobs, the Grammar Battalion, the Language Police. The term I was raised with is SNOOT." See: What Is a SNOOT?


15. (a) See: How to Flatter an Audience With Euphemisms, Dysphemisms, and Distinctio.

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