Sorry, Wrong Answer
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18. The specific English word for a group of kittens is not litter, which can designate animals of different kinds, but kittle, or kindle.
19. The two-word English phrase for self-belittling humor is not self-deprecating humor, which would be humor that is self-disapproving, but self-depreciating humor.
20. The English word babble has no clear and direct connection to the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:4), which the Bible says is named from the Hebrew word for Babylon “because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth” (Genesis 11:9), transforming the meaning of Babel by playing on the Hebrew word balal (“to confound”). The English word babble is probably an onomatopoeia—that is, a word that sounds like its meaning (like “sputter”).
21. The origin of humble in humble pie relates not to the sense of “not proud” but to deer guts. It comes from umble or numble, designating the internal organs (heart, liver, kidneys, and intestines) of an animal such as a deer—parts more likely to be eaten by poor people than by wealthy people. Years ago, umbles were consumed reluctantly or unenthusiastically by servants, while their masters dined on venison.
22. The name of the capital of South Dakota, Pierre, should be pronounced as one syllable, like the word peer.
23. Turdiform means “like a thrush.”
24. Anal feeler means “a posterior sensory appendage in worms and insects.”
25. Anile means “pertaining to or like an elderly woman.”
26. Discomfit does not mean “to discomfort” but “to make unsettled or confused” or “to thwart plans.”
27. Cannes is pronounced not kahn but kan, like can, as in “a can of soup.”
28. The expression drawing room did not come from any drawings that might or might not have existed in drawing rooms but in the rooms’ use for withdrawing. The original expression was withdrawing room, describing a room in a home to which people could withdraw after dinner for conversation or relaxation.
29. Hudson seal is muskrat fur that is dyed, plucked, and sheared to resemble seal.
30. The word dwarf describes a person with shortened arms and legs, whereas midget, which is considered offensive, refers to a little person (the preferred expression) whose body is well proportioned, though smaller than average. There are numerous causes of dwarfism, including genetic ones, hormonal ones, and a combination of both.
31. Cesarean sections were not named after Julius Caesar but, in fact, existed before he was even born. The word cesarean derives from the Latin cadre (“to cut”).
32. Strictly speaking, a civilian is someone who is not a member of some country’s armed forces. Police officers of a city, town, or state are civilians, even though some of them call citizens who are not police civilians.
33. The world comrade was applied not to Soviet citizens generally but rather to members of the Communist Party.
34. Contrary to popular belief, the expression D-Day was first used during World War I. It described the attack at the St. Mihiel Salient, which began against German positions on September 12, 1918, in northeastern France. The battle, which ended on September 15, 1918, involved the American Expeditionary Force and 48,000 French soldiers under the command of U.S. General John J. Pershing.
35. During World War II, the D in D-Day stood for nothing. If one goes to the Internet and goes to the web-site called DOD Dictionary of Military Terms (www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary), one will see the definition of D-Day as the “unnamed day on which operations commence or are scheduled to commence.”
36. The past tense of the verb lie (meaning “to recline”) is lay, as in the title As I Lay Dying.
37. Scan can also mean “to examine minutely or carefully.” The word scan is unusual because it has meanings that are contradictory. The word cleave, which can mean “to split” or “to join” is another word with contradictory meanings. Such words are sometimes called contranyms.
38. Buttery is not a room or pantry for storing butter. Rather, the word can be traced to the Middle English boterie (“ale cellar,” “pantry”). Hence a buttery is a small room where food or alcohol is kept, though it can also describe a tea shop where students in British universities can buy light meals.
Quiz 18
Inventors/Inventions
1. Who invented the guillotine?
2. Who founded the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), the Nazi secret state police?
3. Who invented the printing press, or movable type?
4. Who designed the German Autobahn?
5. Who started the first fire department in the United States?
6. What people invented kilts?
7. What is essential to an airship’s being a dirigible?
8. Who invented the first heavier-than-air craft to make a sustained flight with its own power?
9. Who designed the Volkswagen?
10. Who invented the Franklin stove?
11. What was the first invention to go faster than the speed of sound (in air)?
12. Who invented the forward pass in football?
13. Which nation invented champagne?
14. What nation or culture produced the equal sign in mathematics?
15. Where was table tennis invented?
16. Who invented the military march called the goose step?
17. Who founded Mercedes-Benz?
18. In what country was the Sudoku puzzle invented?
19. Of electrician, furniture designer, dentist, and cardiologist, which was the occupation of the person who invented the electric chair?
20. What people first developed the potato?
21. Who invented the sandwich?
22. In what decade was the bikini invented?
23. Who invented the Bunsen burner?
24. Who invented the English expression paleface to describe white Europeans (as distinguished from American Indians)?
Quiz 18 Answers
Inventors/Inventions
1. The guillotine was invented not by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who encouraged the machine’s use for painless death, but by Tobias Schmidt, a German mechanic under the direction of Dr. Antonin Louise, in honor of whom the guillotine was first known as a Louison or Louisette. In fact, there were guillotine-like devices in Europe centuries before the French Revolution.
2. The person who founded the Gestapo was not Heinrich Himmler, though he was head of the Gestapo for years, but rather Hermann Goering, who created it in 1933.
3. The Chinese were using movable type centuries before Johannes Gutenberg ever did. Gutenberg, however, was the first European to use it.
4. Neither Adolf Hitler nor the Third Reich cabinet invented the Autobahn. The Autobahn came into design twenty years before Hitler’s reign and was implemented a year before Hitler came to power.
5. The first fire department in the United States was started not by Benjamin Franklin, who started the first fire department in Philadelphia, but by Peter (originally Pieter or Petrus) Stuyvesant, who in 1659 had buckets, ladders, and hooks distributed in New Amsterdam (a town on Manhattan Island renamed New York). By the way, among Stuyvesant’s other accomplishments as director-general of New Amsterdam were the protective wall on Wall Street, the canal that became Broad Street, and Broadway.
6. Kilts were not originally Scottish but Irish.
7. A dirigible is distinguished by its capability of being directed and propelled through the air with the use of propellers and rudders (or other thrust).
8. The Wright Brothers were not the first to invent a heavier-than-air craft that could make a sustained flight under its own power; rather, the first inventor of such a craft was Samuel Pierpont Langley, whose Model No. 5, on May 6, 1896, flew for ninety seconds for about three quarters of a mile along the shore of the Potomac—a distance about ten times longer than that flown by any previous heavier-than-air flying machine. Driven by a one-horsepower steam engine and weighing only twenty-six pounds, the passengerless plane gently descended, was refueled, and relaunched the same afternoon. The Wright
Brothers are, however, given credit for achieving the first flight to carry a human passenger, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.
9. The person who designed the Volkswagen was Ferdinand Porsche, though engineer Béla Barényi is at times credited with having conceived the basic design for the Volkswagen Beetle in 1925, five years before Porsche claimed to have completed his version. Barényi, by the way, was inducted into the Detroit Automobile Hall of Fame in 1994 and is often regarded as the father of passive safety in automobiles.
10. The inventor of the Franklin stove was not Benjamin Franklin but David R. Rittenhouse, astronomer, inventor, clockmaker, mathematician, surveyor, and public official. Franklin invented the Pennsylvania Fireplace, which was designed to draw smoke from the bottom rather than from the top. Unfortunately, the smoke didn’t defy the laws of heat convection. In short, hot air rises, so Franklin’s stove was, of course, ineffective. David R. Rittenhouse redesigned the stove in the 1790s by adding an L-shaped exhaust pipe to vent the smoke. Even though Rittenhouse renamed the stove the Rittenhouse stove, it came to be known as the Franklin stove.
11. The first invention to go faster than the speed of sound (in air) was the whip, invented in China thousands of years ago. A whip’s crack is produced by a loop that forms in the whip as one flicks it. The loop travels the length of the whip, speeding up as it moves and producing a small sonic boom.
12. The forward pass was not invented by Notre Dame under Knute Rockne, though Notre Dame used it with devastating effect against Army at West Point in 1913. The forward pass had been legal since 1906 and had been used by many teams over conservative objections. In fact, a remarkably versatile athlete and coach, Amos Alonzo Stagg, claimed in 1906 that he had dozens of pass plays in his repertoire. What’s more, Walter Camp, the father of American football, was the first to propose the forward pass to the rules committee, though it was adopted under severe restrictions. For example, failure to complete a pass resulted in a fifteen-yard penalty from the spot where the ball was put into play and the loss of a down.
13. Champagne was not invented by the French but by the English. In the sixteenth century, the English imported barrels of green, flat wine from Champagne, France, and added sugar and molasses to begin fermentation. What’s more, they developed corks and coal-fired glass bottles to contain it. According to the records of the Royal Society in 1662, méthode Champenoise was first written down in England. Contrary to what some people think, the Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon (1638-1715) did not invent champagne but spent much of his time trying to remove the bubbles.
14. The equal sign was not invented by the Greeks, the Babylonians, or the Arabs but by a Welsh astronomer and mathematician Robert Recorde in 1557. A child prodigy, Recorde wrote popular math textbooks, introduced algebra to an English audience, and introduced the equal sign (=).
15. Table tennis was invented not in China but in England, where it was originally played with balls made from champagne corks and paddles from cigar-box lids. English engineer James Gibb introduced a celluloid ball. The name Ping-Pong was originally trademarked in 1901 by a British company that made sports equipment. The trademark was later sold to Parker Brothers, and, as of 2009, is owned by Escalade Sports. Technically, Olympic athletes play table tennis, not Ping-Pong.
16. The goose step military march was invented not by the Nazis but by Prussian generals in the 1600s. The goose step was adopted by the Russians in the twentieth century and is still used in some countries of the Middle East and in North Korea.
17. Mercedes-Benz was not founded by anyone named Mercedes. An Austrian employed by the Daimler car company, Emil Jellinek, had a daughter, Mercedes, after whom he named an engine and several racing cars. The name Benz comes from Karl Benz, an auto manufacturer whose company merged with Daimler in 1926, creating the brand name Mercedes-Benz. In 1998, the name Daimler resurfaced when the company merged with the Chrysler Corporation to form Daimler-Chrysler.
18. Sudoku was invented in America. Sudoku, despite its name, was invented in the 1970s by a retired architect from Indianapolis named Howard Garns. The logic puzzles were originally called Number Place Puzzles and were published by Dell in a magazine for children. Rediscovered in the 1980s by the Japanese puzzle publisher Nikoli, the puzzles were renamed Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (“the numbers must occur only once”). To cope with a cumbersome name, the publisher abbreviated it to Sudoku. The puzzles gained increasing popularity in Japan and, by 2005, became popular throughout the world, rivaling even crossword puzzles in popularity.
19. The person who invented the electric chair was a dentist. In 1881, Dr. Alfred Southwick (1826-1898), a dentist from Buffalo, New York, saw an intoxicated man touch a live electric generator, which quickly killed him. Dr. Southwick concluded that electricity could be used as an alternative to hanging as capital punishment. Because he was a dentist and was used to dealing with subjects in chairs, his device for electrical execution took the form of an electric chair. Working with David B. Hill, then-governor of New York State, Dr. Southwick achieved his goal of making execution by electricity legal. He also served on the state’s Electrical Death Commission, which between 1888 and 1889 recommended electrocution for capital punishment. On January 1, 1889, the first law allowing the use of electrocution went into effect. On August 6, 1890, William Kemmler, who had butchered his mistress with a hatchet, achieved the distinction of being the first person to be killed by an electric chair. He, by the way, was exposed to electric current twice. His first exposure, which lasted seventeen seconds, left him unconscious but breathing. The embarrassed prison officials tried to electrocute him again, this time for seventy seconds, causing him to thrash and convulse and searing his head and arms. Some witnesses fainted while others fled the room. The killing took about eight minutes. Dr. Southwick, who witnessed the execution, was reported to have said, “We live in a higher civilization from this day.”
20. The first people to develop the potato were not Irish but Peruvians. The potato is from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex. Although Peru is the birthplace of the potato, today nearly all cultivated potatoes worldwide are descendants of a subspecies indigenous to Chile. The potato was introduced to Europe in the 1530s, where it became an important crop and food staple. Because very few varieties were initially introduced, the European crop had little genetic diversity and was vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight spread rapidly through poor communities of western Ireland, producing a crop failure that led to the Irish potato famine.
21. The inventor of the sandwich was not John Montagu, the earl of Sandwich, who wanted to eat while playing cards. The fact is, Arabs were stuffing meats into pita bread centuries before Montagu was born, and European peasants working in fields ate meals of bread and cheese. Ancient Jews, furthermore, ate sandwiches of nuts and fruit placed between matzo during the Passover seder. The earl of Sandwich, however, was the person after whom the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) were once named.
22. In 1946, two Frenchmen, Jacques Heim and Louis Réard, invented what was called the bikini, but scanty two-piece swimsuits existed long before then. When the bikini was invented, the U.S. Army was testing nuclear weapons on the Bikini Atoll. The inventors of the bikini hoped their new item would be as explosive in the fashion world.
23. The Bunsen burner was not invented by its namesake Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, who introduced and popularized the burner in 1855. Although no one knows for sure, many believe that either Peter Desdega or Michael Faraday was its true inventor.
24. American Indians most likely did not coin the word paleface, which was most likely invented and was definitely popularized by white Americans. The one American who did the most to popularize the expression was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), whose book The Last of the Mohicans (1826) made paleface a household word. According to Answers.com, there exists an 1822 report of a frontier masquerade party where a white man dressed as an Indian chief says to another white man, “Ah,
Paleface! What brings you here? You seem to take pleasure in saying rude impertinencies.” Even if the word existed before The Last of the Mohicans, there is no good evidence that Indians originated it.
Quiz 19
Hodgepodge
1. What color is the white rhinoceros?
2. What was the usual color of mourning in the Far East, ancient Rome, and Sparta?
3. What color are you if you’re livid?
4. The first Ford Model Ts came in what color or colors?
5. What color are black bears?
6. What was the shape of Viking helmets?
7. What color is the black box on a commercial airplane?
8. When pirates wanted to dispose of their captives, how did they dispose of them?
9. What causes the cracking sound that occurs after the thumb and middle finger are snapped together?
10. Of Wilbur Wright, President William Howard Taft, Paul Newman, and President James Garfield, who wasn’t born in Ohio?
11. How do bit parts, cameos, extras, and walk-ons differ?
12. What do St. Bernards carry around their necks?
13. Why are no letters assigned to the digits one and zero on a telephone keypad?
14. According to the World Health Organization, what disease or substance is responsible for the death of one in ten adults worldwide?
15. What is an igloo?
16. What is the name of the large, branched candlestick, or holder for lights, such as the one used by the pianist Liberace? Hint: The word starts with can-.
17. In the nineteenth century, covered bridges were particularly popular; why were they preferred to ordinary bridges?
18. What was the worst maritime disaster, judged by the number of fatalities?
19. How can people cure split ends?
20. What is the connection between the U.S. Interstate Highway System and aviation (or aircraft landings)?
21. For what work did Albert Einstein receive the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921?