Quiz: Origin of Words What Do You Think? Are the Following True Or False?

Name ______Language

Date ______

Quiz: Origin of Words
What do you think? Are the following true or false?

1. The word assassin originates from the time of the Crusades. ____
2. The word addict comes from Greek allos meaning "other." Linguists believe it has to do with doing something again and again (another time). ____
3. The word cab comes from an old Italian word for "goat." The first carriages that worked as taxis used to bounce so much that they reminded people of goats on a hillside. ____
4. In the Middle Ages, many sheep were lost to epidemics. The word escape comes from a combination of the words for "sheep" and "ill" in Latin. ____
5. The word essay comes from the French "essayer", which means "to try."

6. The word hospital comes from the Latin word hospitis, which means "someone who receives strangers into his home." ____
7. The word husband was first used in the Bible to refer to the person who "takes care of things." ____
8. The word ketchup comes from Chinese. ____
9. The word muscle comes from the Latin word for mouse. ____
10. The word nice word comes from the Latin nescius for "ignorant." ____
11. The word robot comes from Ancient Greek. A similar word was used for "cattle." ____
12. The word silly comes from the French sillouette. It was first used in the 1800s to describe sculptures. ____
13. The word trivia was not used until the 1930s. It was the brand of a popular game of questions. ____

Origin of Words (20 minutes)
Write the word etymology on the board and ask students what they think it is (the study of the origin of words. Etymology studies words, their roots and how the sounds have evolved over the time). Tell them that, for instance, the word etymology comes from the ancient Greek language. It's composed of two parts: the Greek word atymon, which means "early form of a word," and the Greek word logia, which means "study." Combined, these two parts are "the study of early forms of words."
Other examples to mention in class are:
Hippopotamus: in Ancient Greek the word hippos means horse, and potamus means river. Therefore "hippopotamus" means "river horse."
Malaria: comes from medieval Italian, in which mal means "bad" and aria means "air." The "bad air" was believed to cause fever.
Travel: comes from the French travail which means "work." Linguists argue that this is because, at one time, traveling entailed a lot of work: planning the trip, learning the language and customs, etc.
Hand out copies of printout II and have students try to guess the answers to the quiz. Share the results, (without giving them the correct answers!) and ask students to tell you why they chose their answers.