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Last Week's Quiz

Created by Eli Robinson
Edited by Jonpaul Guinn

Read This First

  • Submit your answers by 11:12am ET 8/17/26
  • Don't cheat. Cheating is bad. Using Google/AI/ChatGPT/Gemini IS cheating.
  • Trivia graders don't care about spelling (but try your hardest)
  • No negative points for incorrect responses (so guess to your heart's content)
  • Email [email protected] for clarification on any questions

English has some really fun words and phrases.

And if you’re not a linguist by trade, you may fall into the trap of believing that our nomenclature has been around for centuries. However, it turns out that a lot of the terms we use today are a lot newer than you may think!



We’ve selected some of our favorite “newer than you think” terms. This should be fun.

SCIENCE & TECH Q1. Large Lizards: Before 1842, there was no single name for the giant fossil reptiles being dug up across England, as they were lumped vaguely with dragons and "antediluvian monsters”. Then anatomist Richard Owen coined what term from the Greek for "fearfully great lizard"?



POP CULTURE Q2. Platonic Pairs: In 1994, Joey Tribbiani tells a lovesick Ross Geller that he has waited too long to make a move on Rachel Green, famously declaring him the "mayor” of what two-word term that shares part of its name with the show that coined it?



MISCELLANEOUS Q3. Child Catigorization: Obviously, individuals had lived between 12-20 years old for millennia but the noun for them as a single demographic with shared tastes didn't hit print until a 1941 issue of Popular Science. Marketers pounced almost immediately. What's the word, arguably a New Deal byproduct that ad-men monetized?



POP CULTURE Q4. Movie Maxims: Do you have some pre-death to-dos? If so, you likely say they’re on what two-word roster that “kicked” off with a 2007 Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman road-trip film?


MISCELLANEOUS Q5. Terror Techniques: When American POWs began praising Chairman Mao during the Korean War, a 1950 newspaper article blamed a sinister new mental cleanse. What one-word name for the technique stuck?



WORD PLAY Q6. Home Holidays: Traveling during the Great Recession of 2008 suddenly became unaffordable for many. Rather than hitting the road, what term became synonymous with those who found a way to enjoy holiday at home?



MISCELLANEOUS Q7. Whewell Words: When poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge objected to fossil-diggers and spark-makers calling themselves "philosophers," polymath William Whewell obliged with a new word in 1833. What's the now-ubiquitous term for folks like Isaac Newton, which replaced "natural philosopher"?



POP CULTURE Q8. TV Terminology: The infamous “Happy Days” episode where Fonz executes a certain maneuver aired on September 20, 1977. But it wasn’t until 1985 that Jon Hein and Sean Connolly coined what term for when a creative work has exhausted its core intent and introduced new ideas that are discordant with or an extreme exaggeration of its original theme or purpose?



SCIENCE & TECH Q9. Labor Lingo: Czech writer Karel Capek needed a name for the artificial laborers in his 1920 sci-fi play “R.U.R.” He nearly went with the Latin-rooted "labori”, but his brother Josef pitched a word built from the Czech term for forced serf labor. What's the one-word result?



POP CULTURE Q10. SNL Sketches: What pessimistic and alliterative nickname for a buzzkill was canonized and maybe even invented in a 2004 SNL sketch starring Rachel Dratch?


TIEBREAKER Fred's Folly: An ardent believer in a “Steady State” universe, Fred Hoyle went on BBC radio to trash the idea of a “big bang at a particular time in the remote past,” accidentally christening the now-common theory during that broadcast in what year?


Quiz is closed and your answers are now locked! Graders are grading and results will be sent on 8/17/26