Here are twenty challenging questions from the linguistic section of the final exam for my English 8 classes. How many can you answer correctly?
1. What word, literally meaning 18 inches long, identifies a person as one who enjoys using long words?
2. What phrase derived from the Odyssey means “caught between a rock and a hard place”?
3. What or who is an abecedarian?
4. What Latin phrase do we use to describe an argument that turns into a personal attack?
5. Punctuate Robert Frost’s line: The woods are lovely dark and deep.
6. What is ironic about the root meaning of utopia?
7. What is a split infinitive and why is it considered bad grammar?
8. What does the Greek word arête mean?
9. What part of a conditional sentence is the apodosis?
10. What is the meter of “How now, Brown cow.”?
11. What is the etymological meaning of ‘enthusiasm’?
12. Which of the following is not pejorative: auspicious, obsequious, prurient, misogynous?
13. For what is the abbreviation i.e. used?
14. What name for a letter in the Greek alphabet means a small amount?
15. Spell the noun that means that by which we tell right and wrong.
16. What Latin phrase is used in English to mean a close friend?
17. What is the difference in the Greek roots andr (android) and anthrop (anthropology), both of which mean man?
18. How are the 24 books of the Greek Odyssey individually named?
19. What academic fraternity uses Greek letters signifying “Philosophy the guide of life”?
20. What were Caesar’s last words?
Answers:
1. sesquipedalian. (Latin: sesqui = one and half times; ped = foot – thus 18 inches)
2. between Scylla and Charybdis. (Odysseus had to decide which of these monsters to avoid.)
3. a beginner. (Literally, on who is just learning their ABCs.)
4. ad hominem argument: (Literally, an argument directed to the man rather than the issue at hand.)
5. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” (Frost himself did not put a comma after dark. Some editors thought they knew better.)
6. A utopia, a perfect place, etymologically means “not a place.”
7. “To boldly go” splits the infinitive ‘to go’ with adverb ‘boldly’. The reason split infinitives were originally considered bad grammar is that in Latin the infinitive (ire: to go) cannot be split (ire audacter: to go boldly). There is no other reason.
8. excellence.
9. The apodosis is the concluding part of a conditional sentence: If I were you, I wouldn’t do it.
10. Spondaic dimeter. (dimeter = two feet; spondaic: long, long)
11. god within (en = within; th = god as in theology; referring to Dionysus who was thought to be
in the wine that was drunk during his religious rites.)
12. Only auspicious never carries a negative connotation.
13. For clarification or definition, not for an example ( e.g.)
14. iota.
15. conscience.
16. alter ego.
17. andr- refers to a man as opposed to a woman and anthrop refers generically to man.
18. By the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet.
19. Phi Beta Kappa.
20. kai su, teknon (Greek for “you too, child”), not the Shakespearean Latin revision et tu, Brute (you too, Brutus).
Rating:
16-20: correct You know as much as an 8th grader.
10-15 correct: You know as much as the average college educated adult.
0-9 correct: You need to retake 8th grade.
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