How many baskets are there in a Dodekathronon?
According to Historian Bernard Lewis in his essay
The Revolt of Islam: "Followers of many
faiths have at one time or another invoked religion in the practice of murder,
both retail and wholesale. Two words deriving from such movements in Eastern
religions have even entered the English language...."
Assassin is one of them. What is the
other?
In Latin amare means "to love." What
given name means "she who is worthy of love" in Latin?
Idiom-wise, what substance connotes
"permanent and indestructible humanity"?
Etymology-wise, what part of a circle is a beam of
light?
What literary technique's name
derives from a Greek word that means "feigned ignorance"?
Its name was coined by translating the French phrase
coup de soleil. What condition is it?
It derives from a Late Latin phrase that means
"greatest premise" and it denotes "a general truth expressed in one sentence."
What word is it?
The Heptanesos has seven of them.
What are they?
What hyphenated word meaning "weakly
sentimental" was coined to describe the poetry of Ambrose Philips?
Some claim that it derives from an
American custom of indicating who the card dealer is by stabbing a buckhorn
knife into the table in front of him. What cliché is
it?
What Odyssean sea nymph's name means "hidden" in
Greek?
What diagnostic method's name
derives from a word that means "life sight" in Greek?
The Romans nicknamed it Arabia Felix,
fortunate Arabia. Nowadays, it's called Yemen. What is it
called in the King James Bible?
Etymology-wise, what poison is a
fair lady?
It derives from a Latin word meaning "run" and it
denotes the Barbary-Coast Pirates who terrorized European shipping in the 17th
and 18th centuries. What word is it?
In the 14th century the name denoted
"the stupid man personified." By the 19th century, the given and surnames had
been fused into an noun denoting any type of stupidity. What word is
it?
Which relative's honorific derives
from a Latin word meaning "little grandfather"?
There are just two extant English
words that use the Middle English suffix -head. What are they?
According to the Atlantic
Monthly, which political organization's name means "conquest" in
Arabic when read in one direction and "death" when read in the
other?
According to the
Washington Post, the US's first political
mass-media stunt was during the Whig campaign for William Henry Harrison in
1840. During it: "They constructed a 10-foot-high ball of twine, wood and tin,
covered it with Whig political slogans, and rolled it first from Cleveland to
Columbus and then from town to town across the country."
What for four-word expression resulted from
this?
Which economist coined the term
conventional wisdom?
According to Paul Theroux in his book Riding
the Iron Rooster, what city's name means red
hero in Mongolian?
What politico-religious sect's name
derives from the name of its founder Muhammad ibn
Ismail al-Darazi?
According to Orientalist Historian Bernard Lewis, there is no word
in Arabic for this country's name; what country is it?
When it entered English it meant
"afterwards born"; since then it has come to mean "undersized"; what word is
it?
The word caryatids is to women
as what word is to men?
Just two English words both begin
and end with the letters UND; what are they?
What word was coined to describe
flautists who held their instruments pretentiously high while
performing?
What two words were combined to coin
the radio term WILCO - as in "Roger, wilco, over and out"?
The Romans called them "thorn hogs";
what do we call them?
What country's nickname means "land
of winter" in Latin?
Which adverb best translates the
Latin ubi as in the word
ubiquitous
According to the
Wikipedia, it was coined by Andy Nimmo in
December 1960 for a talk on the Everett many-worlds
interpretation of quantum physics. It originally denoted:
"an apparent universe, a multiplicity of which, go to
make up the whole universe." What word is it?
According to Thomas Pynchon, it is
used for ideological enforcement and it denotes "a set of techniques said to be
based on the work of IP Pavlov, who had once trained dogs to salivate on cue";
what Cold War term is it?
It turns out that when you play the
Star Wars theme in reverse, it becomes the song
Born Free. Is there, thus, an inverse
relationship between the two songs?
What company's name denotes "1
followed by 100 zeros"?
Richard Dawkins, professor of the
Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, defines it as: "that set of
practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail
tests." What type of medicine is it?
What car-type's name means "mercies"
in Spanish?
The word Oriental is to eastern and the word occidental is to western as what two words are to
northern and southern?
What literary character's name means
son of the Dragon in Romanian?
According to Felipe Fernandez in his
book Near a thousand tables: A history of food, its inventor gave it this name
because its white sheen reminded him of the pearls known as marguerites; what
is it?
Here's a MooT crossword-puzzle
question: what might a Portuguese call "acts of faith performed in the city of
Holy Faith"? (16 letters)
What substance's name means
light bringing in Greek?
It got its name because its flavour
resembles a combination of clove, cinnamon, and nutmeg; what spice is
it?
In Greek mythology, Apollo often
assumed the form of a dolphin; what Greek place-name reflects this?
What snake's name means "snake" in
Portuguese?
What information source's name means
"the peninsula" in Arabic?
What seafaring people did the
ancient Greeks call the "purple people"?
It was derived from the name of a
Greek maiden who beat Athena in a weaving contest; what entomological term is
it?
Which psychiatrist added the words
introvert and extrovert to our daily discourse?
According to the
New Yorker Magazine , its name was derived from
a phrase that means "word war" in Croatian; what game's name is it?
Their name literally means "thunder"
in Greek; which writers are they?
According to
Mark Simpson, who coined the term in 1994,
it denotes: "a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of
a metropolis because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and
hairdressers are." What term is it?
It derives from the 1973 armed
robbery of the Sveriges Kreditbank in
Sweden during which four bank employees were held hostage in a vault for more
than five days; what psychology term is it?
What two words were combined to coin
the religious name Shaker?
In Spanish it denotes both "people"
and the places where people live; what word is it?
In Greek derma means "skin"; what art form's name means "skin
arrangement" in Greek?
According to Fowler, it actually
denotes a "group of repressed emotional ideas responsible for an abnormal
mental condition," but it has evolved into a synonym for "a bee in one's
bonnet"; what word is it?
Imitative of a sound used by
Australian aboriginals, it is used to attract attention from a distance; what
word is it?
The punch line of the wartime joke
is: Send 3 and 4 pence, we are going to a
dance; what was the original message?
What country celebrates
Zanzibar Revolution Day?
In Latin ala means "wing"; what part
of the human body does its diminutive label?
What nut got its name because the
base of the shell resembles a face?
What sport captivates
toxophilites?
What word was altered to coin the
word heist?
What support structure's name was
coined by combining the words gallon and
tree?
The word burger is to hamburger as the word cello is to what?
What synonym for
names names a mountain chain?
What card game's name means "basket"
in Spanish?
In Old English its name means "spear
leek"; what bulb-type is it?
Its previous name was a Portuguese
word meaning "beautiful"; what island is it?
According to the book
Using Type Right, what two letters were
concatenated to create the ampersand?
What narcotic got its name because
it improved self-esteem?
There are two singing style's names
that mean "in the church style" in Italian; a
cappella is one, what is the other?
Yiddish-wise, the word
schmooze is to talk as what word is to rendered fat?
It derives from an alternative name
for St. Sebastian, a subterranean cemetery
near Rome; what three-syllable word is it?
What do you call someone who
composes encomiums?
What politico-religious sect's name
derives from the name of its founder Muhammad ibn
Ismail al-Darazi?
The ancient Greeks called this
disease phthisis; what do modern English
speakers call it?
What words were combined to coin the
proprietary term Brylcreem?
Two abbreviations satisfy the
dictum: lowercase a weight, uppercase a state; TN. is one, what is the other?
From which language did English
derive the word futon: Japanese or
Hindi?
In Middle Dutch it denotes "a wooden
vessel"; when it entered English, it came to denote "the set of articles needed
for a specific purpose"; what 3-letter word is it?
It derives from the Swahili word for
"marsh"; what city-name is it?
What one-syllable word best
translates the Greek word peri, as in
perigee?
What word can be abbreviated by
either oct. or 8vo?
What word describes anything having
to do with Oxford?
What is the adjectival form of the
word phylum?
Its name means "place where the
waters narrow" in Algonquian; what Canadian place-name is it?
In Hebrew it means "my master"; what
word is it?
What three-syllable phrase was
shortened to coin the word riff-raff?
The Arabs called this number
sifr; what did the Europeans call
it?
What word was modified to coin the
sport's term scrimmage?
Which drink's name literally means
"pressed out" in Italian?
According to the Concise Oxford,
which two animals snicker?
Spell the letter
W as a word?
What entertainer-type's name means
"summit walker" in Greek?
The French call a "little tuft of
hair"; what do the English call it?
In Arabic the phrase
al kubba means "the vault"; what English
architectural term resulted?
In Latin it means "I believe"; in
English it denotes a statement of belief; what word is it?
Its name derives from a Sanskrit
word that means "horn body" - a reference to its antler shape; what spice is
it?
Which two-syllable word best
translates the Latin word pugil?
What German double-goer labels your phantom twin?
Which word derives from an Arabic
word meaning "decide a point of law": imam,
ayatolla, or mufti?
What affliction's name means
"shut-eye" in Greek?
According to Wired Magazine, it was coined to denote "a rebuttal
written in anticipation of a need to rebut"; what three-syllable neologism is
it?
What word was combined with
frolicking to coin the word
rollicking?
What did Anglicized Vikings call the
December solstice festival?
What flower was named for
Paion, the physician of the Greek
gods?
In 1983, Richard Stallman founded
the Free Software Foundation and developed a
licensing program that he described as the mirror-image of copyright; what did
he call it?
George Santayana defined it as: "a
person who redoubles his effort after he has forgotten his goals"; what word is
it?
Which did Thomas Aquinas define as:
"sadness at the good of others in so far as they don't deserve it": jealousy or
indignation?
What American city's name means "the
meadows" in Spanish?
What do inhabitants of the Orkneys
call themselves?
In the phrase
Jack Spratt's fat the apostrophe replaces two
letters; what are they?
The Anglo-Saxons called this ordinal
other; what did the Anglo-Normans call
it?
What are the two singular forms of
the plural insignia?
The Jewish name
Yitzhak means "he laughs"; what is the English
version of this name?
What Indonesian island's name means
"barley" in Sanskrit?
In Hausa it means "evil spirit"
whereas in English it denotes: "An object used as a fetish, a charm, or an
amulet in West Africa."; what two syllable word is it?
What sub-atomic particle was once a
Greek coin?
Its name derives from the Arabic
mukayyar, choice; what choice fabric is
it?
Heidi Fleiss defines it as "acting
as a go-between in a sexual intrigue"; what three-syllable word is
it?
Which would you expect to find in a
charnel house: prostitutes or corpses?
Which do Americans call a trillion:
1,000,000,000 or 1,000,000,000,000?
Which is scabrous: the indecent or
the illegitimate?
According to rapper Afrika
Bambaataa, which is an aspect of the other: rap or hip-hop?
Was the word fisher meaning fisherman coined in the 20th century?
Etymology-wise, which is monstrous:
a terabyte or a gigabyte?
Which abbreviation means "and the
following pages": et al. or
et seq.?
Which word means "crumb" in Latin:
mica or talc
?
Which point in the moon's orbit is
farthest from earth: the apogee or the perigee?
Which has greater celestial status:
the cherub or the seraph?
Which is resplendent: an elaborate
meal or the sun?
What element was named for the
founder of Thebes?
It derives from the word
bouillir, to boil, and it denotes beef cured
or pickled in brine; what phrase is it?
What unit of measure's name means
"one hundred steps" in Latin?
Which 90's American sitcom
character's name means: "a dealer in provisions of a specific
kind"?
In classical mythology, it denoted
where the blessed dead went after death; now it's an adjective that denotes
that which is blissful; what word is it?
It was coined by translating a
German word meaning "in feeling"; in English it denotes "the ability to let in
the feelings of others"; what word is it?
Which US politician coined the name
United Nations?
The oldest reference to them is
found in the writings of Julius Caesar who used it to designate a group of
tribes in north-eastern Gaul; what two-syllable name is it?
The word Norway derives from the Old Norse
Norvegr, north way; what country did the
Norweigians call South way: Sweden, Germany,
or Finland?
It derives from the Yiddish
gletshn, to slip, and has come to label any
problem that causes a system to malfunction; what word is it?
In Homer's Odyssey, Hermes gives
Odysseus a piece of the molu plant to be used to make Circe's potions harmless;
what exclamatory phrase derived from this?
The phrase derives from the name of
a character in John Arbuthnot's satire The Law Is a
Bottomless Pit; what national personification is it?
In Hausa (a language of Northern
Nigeria) it means "evil spirit" whereas in English it denotes: "An object used
as a fetish, a charm, or an amulet in West Africa."; what two syllable word is
it?
In Middle Dutch it denotes "a wooden
vessel"; when it entered English, it came to denote "the set of articles needed
for a specific purpose"; what three-letter word is it?
In addition to solving the problem
of converting a 3-dimensional globe into a 2-dimensional map, he also coined
the cartographic term atlas; who is
he?
The Greeks called them
nautilos; who or what are they?
It was coined in 1754 by the English
novelist Horace Walpole. He derived it from the title of a fable whose heroes,
Walpole explained, "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity,
of things they were not in quest of"; what word is it?
It was coined by modifying the place
name Conestoga; what product nickname is it?
Derived from the Latin word for
cattle, it now describes
the unusual in English; what word is
it?
According to the
New York Times, which singer's name means
"sparrow" in French slang?
It derives from a Latin word that
means "people" and denotes someone who "represents the people"; what word is
it?
Which is greater: the number of
sounds in the English language or the number of letters in the
alphabet?
Its name was coined by combining the
words wiggle and poll; what creature is it?
They got their name because of a
rumour that the steel plates used in their construction were taken from petrol
containers; what weapon is it?
It derives from the Middle Flemish
jammeren, to be sorrowful, and it has come to
denote peevish or whiny complaining; what transitive verb is it?
Which are fatuous: the purposeless
or the insignificant?
According to Witold Rybczynski,
which Spanish town is more likely to be fortified: the pueblo or the
presidio?
Which decrees: the ordinance or the
ordnance?
Is it possible to meliorate a thing
without ameliorating it?
Is it possible for a thing to be a
percept and not be a precept?
Which makes people slight you: your
unimportance or your unattractiveness?
Which is also called Draughts:
Checkers or Backgammon?
Which word entered English first:
jell or jelly
?
Which word is Euro-centric:
incarnadine or indigo ?
According to the
Online Etymological Dictionary, it originally
meant "to have sex on horseback"; what two-word phrase is it?
The word garden is to gardener
as the word rosarium is to what?
What is the adjectival form of the
word ventriloquist?
Its two-word name was coined from
the names A.T. Kliegl and J.H. Kliegl; what device is it?
Etymology-wise, which word best
translates the word coolie: day-labourer or
person-power vehicle?
What words were combined to coin the
trade name Swatch?
It was coined by abbreviating the
phrase Association Football; what game name is
it?
According to www.wordorigins.org it was coined as an acronym for the
phrase south of Houston Street; what place
name is it?
It derives from a Latin verb meaning
to weave and it denotes
that which is written; what word is
it?
In Greek it means "leader" and it
was originally used to describe the relationship of Athens to the other Greek
city-states that joined it in an alliance against the Persian Empire; what word
is it?
What elevated antonyms did Van Wyck
Brooks coin to distinguish those interested in the life of the mind from those
not?
In Hebrew it means "candlestick";
what word is it?
Its name derives from a Hebrew word
that means "to weigh"; what monetary unit is it?
What space-station's name means
"peace" in Russian?
Recently, in my spare time, I
discovered the world's smallest particle. I named it the goog because it weighs exactly one billion to the minus
googol grams. Is the goog
infinitesimally small?
Which is the Calamity Jane: the Jane
who causes the calamity or the Jane who predicts it?
Which word entered English first:
ping or pong
?
Which is at the top of the pillar:
the capital or the capitol?
Which makes the Pied Piper pied: his
appearance or his temperament?
In 1507 a cartographer published a
map and a new feminine proper noun was born.
If he had chosen the masculine form, what would
the noun have been?
According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, what animal's
name means all beasts in Greek?
What Latin neither labels neithers?
Etymology-wise, the name
Panthalassa is to sea as what name is to earth ?
In Greek nomos means "law"; what do you call those who believe
they are not constrained by the prevailing moral law?
H. L. Mencken defined it as: "an
illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable"; what word is
it?
To give additional emphasis, authors
sometimes end interrogatory exclamations with ?! ; what is this punctuation mark called?
The primordial Greek loan word used
to label them was tribades which means "those
who rub each other"; what are they more commonly called nowadays?
According to Wired magazine : "When they write the account of the 2004
campaign, it will include at least one word that has never appeared in any
presidential history"; what word is it?
What diplomatic term originally
denoted "the first flyleaf glued onto a manuscript"?
If one photo is worth a trillion
hits, is one photo worth a petahit?
According to The New Strong's Complete Dictionary of Bible Words , it
was derived from the Hebrew name Yahowchanan ;
which English given name is it?
Initially, it denoted a weak point
of a sword blade; now it denotes a weak point of character; what word is
it?
According to Loose Cannons, Red Herrings, and Other Lost Metaphors
by Robert Claiborne, an adjective was coined because a plant found on an island
caused facial convulsions that resembled scornfully mocking laughter; what was
the adjective and what was the island?
What archaic five-letter suffix
denotes "poor quality imitation"?
Which defunct Jewish sect's name
derives from an Aramaic word that means "the separated ones"?
Which threads are stretched
lengthwise in the loom: the warp or the weft?
According to the
BBC, when was the word sex first used to mean "sexual intercourse" — as in
"have sex with someone": 1929 or 1729?
The science of bodies in motion is
called dynamics; what is the science of bodies
at rest called?
According to an OED editor-at-large, it derives from an African-American
pronunciation of a disparaging term for a Hungarian laborers; what epithet is
it?
What country's name means "he that
fights with with God"?
According to the
OED, Samuel Johnson mistranslated its Latin
ancestor to mean "mutually destructive" when in fact it means "very deadly or
destructive" - but Johnson's version has become the current meaning; what word
is it?
What parlour game's name derives
from a word meaning "conversation" in Modern Provencal?
What game's name means "grope
frantically" in English?
In Greek doxa means "praise"; what do you call a praising of God
that terminates a prayer?
What city caused the coining of a
word meaning "a person devoted to sensuous luxury"?
What do Los Angeles real estate
agents call abdominoplasty ?
According to the
Concise Oxford Dictionary, which does the
fledgling hang-glider lack: experience or competence?
What type of newspaper was named
for a small Venetian coin?
It means "acknowledgement" in
10code; what response is it?
It describes hen behaviour and was
coined by translating the German word hackliste; it eventually came to denote "human status
hierarchy"; what phrase is it?
His name has come to denote a long,
adventurous journey; who is he?
Originally, it denoted a written
petition in which the signatures are arranged in a circle so that you can't
tell who signed first; now it denotes a type of competition; what hyphenated
word is it?
In Ireland, the 1366 Statute of
Kilkenny limited English rule to Dublin and a surrounding layer of settlement;
what phrase came to denote the areas of Ireland outside this layer?
According to Sebastian Junger in The
Perfect Storm, in the United States it is defined as: "more that three miles
from shore"; what phrase is it?
What life-saver's name means
"against life" in Greek?
What French word was modified to
coin the golfing term caddy?
Which vegetable's name means "little
gourds" in Italian?
Its name derives from the Italian
word for "nephew"; what species of unfairness is it?
According to David Shenk in the book
Data Smog, two neologisms can be defined as:
"advertisements disguised to look like journalism"; what are they?
What famous battle's name means
"gates of heat" in Greek?
What word was shortened to coin the
word gin - as in cotton gin?
The word cigar is to cigarillo as
the word fiber is to what?
Originally, a Chinese Communist
motto meaning "work together," during WWII it became an American armed-forces
slogan meaning "zealous"; what phrase is it?
During a 1950 radio broadcast, Fred
Hoyle coined the term while using it derogatorily, but it was so compelling
that it stuck; what cosmological catch-phrase is it?
What dog command derives from a
French word meaning "advance"?
According to Sports Illustrated Magazine, its 1919 defeat of Man
O'War caused its name to become a common sports term; what was the horse's
two-syllable name?
When it was patented, it was called
a display-system x-y position indicator; what
is this ubiquitous device called now?
Etymology-wise, which word doesn't
belong to this set: Kodak,
Nylon, or Vaseline
?
The London Times claims it derived
from their way of complaining as they trudged along jungle trails; what
American military sobriquet is it?
The name Dick is to Richard as
the name Izzy is to what?
What does the
K in K-Mart
stand for?
What words were combined to coin the
company name Nabisco?
What California town got its name
because it has tall trees?
In 1342, the King of England defined
it as: "the length of three barley-corn kernels"; what word is it?
How many teaspoons are there in a
tablespoon?
What activity led to the coining of
the phrase to pull one's weight?
Which surname was sometimes adopted
by butchers: Chandler, Kellogg, or Parker
?
According to Sebastian Junger, it
originally denoted: "estimating your position based on a compass heading,
forward speed, and wind condition - when observation is impossible"; but it has
evolved into a figure of speech; what phrase is it?
According to Witold Ryzbinski, what
Canadian city's name means "the meeting place" in an aboriginal
language?
What author's surname was the
Old-English name for the devil?
What do Norwegians call a sloping
track?
Originally, it denoted the lowest
note in the medieval sequence of hexachords; now it labels all ranges; what
word is it?
What do logophobics
fear?
To condemn it, you would call this
behaviour officious; what sesqipedalian
adjective would you use to praise it?
The word went was once the past-tense of two one-syllable
verbs; go was one; what was the
other?
It's another way of saying "10 to
the 12th"; what prefix is it?
Literally, it means "at one" and it
denotes the act of restoring one's oneness; what word is it?
It denotes the syndrome caused by
the excessive drinking of absinthe; what word is it?
According to historian John Romer,
its name derives from an Old Byzantine phrase that means "the city"; what city
is it?
How many abbreviations does the word
versus have?
In French the word
briser means "break"; what did the French
call the fragments that had broken off?
Which past participle describes the
steady and sober?
In the early days of printing
often-used illustrations were set in metal; what two literary terms
resulted?
According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, it was
perhaps coined as a corruption of the name Connaught, "a name originally applied by the French
Canadians to Irish Immigrants"; what ethnic label is it?
In Greek hodos means "way"; what instrument measures the length
of your way?
In Italian it means "little child";
in English it denotes "childlike thinker"; what word is it?
Derived from a French word meaning
"to cut," it denotes a ticket that is cut off; what word is it?
In Greek its name means "a line
measuring through"; what mathematics term is it?
It denotes a pedantic, exhaustive,
point-by-point refutation of someone's political position and it was named for
a British news-correspondent who employs it; what one-syllable neologistic
eponym is it?
Will you find the word
webster in the Concise Oxford Dictionary?
In Latin fans means "speaking"; the Romans called them "those
who cannot speak"; what do we call them?
In medieval Latin it meant "not of
the city proper"; in French it means "suburb"; what word is it?
In Latin it originally meant "sand,"
then it came to mean "sand-strewn place of combat"; what word is
it?
The Romans called it
sagitta; what do English speakers call
it?
Which Macedonian is invective's
eponym?
Whence blows the northerly: north or
south?
According to Fowler's Modern English Usage, sarcasm is to faults
as what intellectual stance is to morals?
According to the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, what
musical genre was named for the color of tobacco leaves?
More and more people have begun
calling this symbol the octothorpe; what is its
more common name?
Name three of the four most
frequently occurring words in English writing?
It was coined in the 16th century
when the consonants Y, H, and W were mistakenly mixed with the vowels of the
word Adonai; what proper noun is
it?
It derives from a Greek word meaning
"return home" and it denotes "sentimental yearning"; what word is
it?
In addition to coining the
cartographic term atlas, he solved the riddle
of converting a 3-dimensional globe into a 2-dimensional map; who is
he?
When the editor of the
Manchester Guardian first heard the neologism in
1928, he exclaimed: "The word is half Greek and half Latin - no good will come
of it"; what communication device's name was it?
What force's name means "heavy" in
Latin?
The word Louisianan is to noun
as what word is to adjective?
There are two words that mean
"macadam that has been bound with tar"; what are they?
In Latin it means "cradle"; in
English it denotes a book printed before 1501; what word is it?
What magician's word was contracted
to coin the word hoax?
What month's name derives from a
word that means "purgations" in Latin?
Trying to add some precision to its
meaning, Mathematician J.E. Littlewood defined
it as "an event that has special significance when it occurs, but occurs with a
probability of one in a million."; what word is it?
The word somnambulism is to walk as what word is to talk?
The word husband is to wife as
the word sultan is to what?
Its name derives from a bridge-like
game known as tarocchi; what is
it?
It derives from the Latin
frangere, to break, and it labels
a set of patterns that cannot be represented by
classical geometry; what word is it?
What word was contracted to coin the
goody in the phrase Goody Two-Shoes
According to www.wordorigins.org, originally it labeled any small
thing, but it eventually came to denote 1/8th of a peso. What word is
it?
How many millenniums are there in a
chiliad?
According to the Concise Oxford
Dictionary, what are the plurals of the word it?
What beverage was named for Edward
Vernon, the English admiral who served his crew diluted rum?
Name the individual who coined the
acronyms URL, HTML, HTTP, and WWW.
Its most accurate definition is:
"the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the
transition between two hyperfine levels of cesium-133 in the ground state";
what unit of time is it?
In English there are three prefixes
that mean "below"; one of them is "sub"; what are the other two?
What car-type's name means "I roll"
in Latin?
What adverb can mean both "soon" and
"now"?
The British abbreviation for penny
is d - as in 10d; what word does the
d abbreviate?
Which homonyms build and
destroy?
According to the
Harper's English Grammar, there are four
demonstrative pronouns in the English language: this, that, these, and those;
however, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, there are five - what is
the fifth one?
According to the
Concise Oxford Dictionary, its name probably
derives from the Sanskrit word for the number five; what type of drink is
it?
When the editor of the
Manchester Guardian first heard the neologism
in 1928, he exclaimed: "The word is half Greek and half Latin - no good will
come of it"; what device-name is it?
It was derived from the name of a
Greek maiden who beat Athena in a weaving contest; what taxonomic term is
it?
According to author Mark Kurlansky (
Concise Oxford Dictionary: A biography of a fish that
changed the world ), what substance etymologically binds the words
soldier and salad?
According to Rabbi Ken Spiro's
Crash Course on Jewish History, this Crusader cry
was originally derived as an acronym of a Latin phrase meaning
Jerusalem Has Fallen; what 3-letter cheer is
it?
To suss something out is to
investigate it; what word was modified to coin the word suss ?
It was coined by combining the
French words for hook and
velvet; what synthetic material is it?
According to the
American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, what name was modified to coin the word jingo?
It once denoted a "sequence of six
cards," but now it labels a type of discrimination; what word is
it?
Derived from the Italian word for
leg, it originally denoted "the act of
tripping someone up while wrestling"; now it often refers to the act of
tripping someone up while playing chess; what word is it?
The word cinephile is to cinema as what word is to ballet?
According to History of God by Karen Armstrong, what Middle-Eastern
city's name means "springtime hill" in Hebrew?
Etymology-wise, the word
orthodoxy is to opinion as what word is to
action?
According to William Safire, what is
the plural of the phrase Poet
Laureate?
What word was contracted to coin the
word bate, as in bated
breath?
According to the
Concise Oxford Dictionary, its title could
have been: The Inability to Cope with Rapid
Progress; what book is it?
It entered Japanese in 1281 when a
typhoon destroyed a Mongol invasion fleet. Approximately 633 years later, it
entered English. What word is it?
Does the following question make
sense: Is an a fortiori ceterus paribus a reductio ad
absurdum?
It derives from the name of a
Spanish political party whose name literally meant "those who will not agree";
what word is it?
What substance's name derives from a
Greek word meaning "belonging to Ammon"?
In Greek para means "beside"; what do scientists call constant
quantities beside which other quantities are measured?
What is the antonym of the word
ambilevous ?
What syllable can indicate a member
of a tribe, a member of a faction, and a denizen of a place?
The word cigar is to cigarette
as the word organ is to what?
It derives from the Spanish
papagayo, parrot, and it has come to denote a
"vain, talkative person"; what word is it?
Initially, it denoted a ram's horn that was blown in
celebration, then it came to label a 50th-year celebration, now it denotes any
time of rejoicing; what word is it?
Paracelsus coined it to name a medicine that contained
opium, gold, and crushed pearls (among other things); eventually it came to
denote any tincture of opium; what word is it?
When they were first detected in the 1960s, they were
called radio stars because they emit large amounts of
radiation, including radio waves; what did astronomers call them
next?
What geographical eponym was evoked
by the North-African corsair Khair ad-Din?
What do you call a member of
Hezbollah?
Etymology-wise, it purportedly means
"sweet-speaking"; nowadays it describes speakers who sugar-coat harsh
realities; what hyphenated phrase is it?
According to American literary
critic Paul Fussell in Thank God for the Atom
Bomb, what slang word for intercourse
did World War I soldiers coin by mispronouncing a French word meaning
prostitute?
What bacterium's name means
twisted berry in Greek?
What are the two adjectival forms of
the word troglodyte?
What are residents of Cairo
called?
Which American city's nickname
means "goat enclosure" in Old English?
In which century was the word
deodorant coined: the 15th or the 19th?
According to Bertrand Russell, it
originally denoted: "everything that is in the province of the muses"; what
word is it?
What cliche de-emphasizes the
visible 1/9th?
(Contest) What cliche de-emphasizes
the visible 1/9th?
It derives from a Latin word that was used to express
disgust at the smell of a stench, and it is what an Englishman would say to
express outraged propriety. What archaic three-letter oath is
it?
Originally, it was the name of a
character in a 16th-century English comedy. Since then it has come to denote
"that which is genuine." What hyphenated phrase is it?
If it had been manufactured in
Greece, it would have been called the Pleiades. What Japanese
car-type is it?
In 1964 the book
The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in
America by E. Digby Baltzell was published and a new acronym entered
common discourse. What was it?
How many plurals does the word
cyclops have?
It denotes a "fall guy" and perhaps
derives from the nickname of a 1880's minstrel show character who was blamed
whenever something went wrong. What word is it?
Derived from the name of a character
in George Du Maurier's novel Trilby, it denotes
a hypnotically forceful person who induces others to perform evil. What word is
it?
Originally, a nautical command to
keep a ship's head to the wind, it now describes the emotionally distant. What
word is it?
What do Christians usually call
camphor gum resin?
According to the game show
Jeopardy: A Chinese written character was coined
by combining a character meaning "danger" with another meaning "opportunity";
what six-letter English word best translates it?
It derives from a Latin word that
means "one-tenth of a Roman legion"; now it labels a statistical grouping. What
word is it?
In what century did the term
welfare - as in the sense "social effort to improve the
well-being of the poor" - enter English?
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