English: The Sneaky Bits

Literature · 20 questions

You have spoken it for years; now find out what it has been hiding.

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1. Why does English have 'cow' but 'beef', and 'pig' but 'pork'?

   1. Latin was taught only to cooks
   2. Norman French rule split farm and table words
   3. Old Norse renamed all livestock
   4. Printers invented the second set
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   B) Norman French rule split farm and table words

2. English speakers say 'a lovely big old red Italian car' without thinking. Which rule are they obeying?

   1. The rule against split infinitives
   2. The Oxford comma rule
   3. The fixed order of adjectives
   4. The rule of vowel harmony
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   C) The fixed order of adjectives

3. A word that can mean its own opposite, such as 'cleave' or 'sanction', is called what?

   1. A homonym
   2. A synonym
   3. An eponym
   4. A contronym
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   D) A contronym

4. Why does English spelling so often disagree with English pronunciation?

   1. Pronunciation shifted after spelling was fixed
   2. Spelling was never standardised
   3. Dictionaries were written abroad
   4. Printers used random spellings
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   A) Pronunciation shifted after spelling was fixed

5. The old ban on splitting an infinitive was borrowed from the grammar of which language?

   1. Old Norse
   2. Norman French
   3. Latin
   4. Ancient Greek
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   C) Latin

6. A sentence containing every letter of the alphabet is called what?

   1. A palindrome
   2. An acrostic
   3. A lipogram
   4. A pangram
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   D) A pangram

7. 'Brunch' and 'smog' are examples of which kind of word formation?

   1. Portmanteau blending
   2. Back formation
   3. Reduplication
   4. Clipping
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   A) Portmanteau blending

8. Which of these words is famously said to have no perfect rhyme in English?

   1. Danger
   2. Orange
   3. Marble
   4. Candle
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   B) Orange

9. The comma placed before 'and' in a list of three or more is usually called what?

   1. The serial dash
   2. The Oxford comma
   3. The Cambridge stop
   4. The list colon
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   B) The Oxford comma

10. Which everyday English word is usually cited as having the most distinct dictionary senses?

    1. Set
    2. Turn
    3. Light
    4. Head
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    A) Set

11. What does the 'k' in 'knight' and 'knee' tell us about older English?

    1. It marked a foreign loanword
    2. It was added by printers for width
    3. It showed a long vowel
    4. The letter was once pronounced
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    D) The letter was once pronounced

12. 'Awful' once meant something very different. What was it?

    1. Empty and worthless
    2. Painfully loud
    3. Full of awe, inspiring wonder
    4. Difficult to reach
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    C) Full of awe, inspiring wonder

13. 'Decimate' comes from a Roman practice involving what proportion?

    1. One in three
    2. Half
    3. One in ten
    4. Nine in ten
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    C) One in ten

14. Words like 'buzz', 'hiss' and 'clang' imitate the sounds they name. What is that called?

    1. Alliteration
    2. Onomatopoeia
    3. Assonance
    4. Metonymy
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    B) Onomatopoeia

15. English has more words borrowed from other languages than most European languages.

    1. True
    2. False
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    A) True

16. The letter 'y' can function as a vowel in English.

    1. True
    2. False
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    A) True

17. English nouns are grammatically masculine or feminine, as in French.

    1. True
    2. False
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    B) False

18. 'Ghoti' is a joke spelling meant to be read as 'fish', mocking English spelling rules.

    1. True
    2. False
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    A) True

19. The 'i before e except after c' rule holds without exception in English.

    1. True
    2. False
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    B) False

20. The longest words in English are almost all of Germanic origin.

    1. True
    2. False
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    B) False