It's the End of the Line for You Quiz

Answer: Target

OK, this starts us off pretty straightforwardly. What can you aim for, both literally and figuratively? Sure, a target. Of course, if you "hit the target," you've accomplished your objective -- and by extension, if you "hit the bull's-eye," you've achieved that goal with exceptional accuracy. Ever used an actual bow and arrow? That dead-center inner ring is small and hard to hit, even for an expert marksman.

It takes both skill and focus. So if you want your aim to be true, know precisely what your goal is -- it's hard to hit a target if you haven't decided what you're aiming for!

Answer: Endgame

"Endgame" is one of those intriguing-sounding words that can evoke a lot of different images or scenarios. It's a shortened way of saying "end of the game," and as a chess term, it's been around since the mid-19th century. Even when a chess match has narrowed down to just a few pieces left in play, there's still a vast degree of strategy involved -- and sometimes the paucity of pieces actually makes it even more challenging to close in on an opponent without putting your own king in peril. The broader usage of the term is a reflection of the fact that in basically any endeavor, there's a final stage or objective that represents the culmination of one's efforts -- including the hoped-for outcome. As you draw ever nearer to your goal, it's important to have planned out in advance what your last few steps are.

As a side note, another use of the term "endgame" is specific to quiz and game shows and refers to a final round of play, especially if it's a bonus round. Most game shows are divided into two parts -- the "front game," which determines which player is the winner, and the endgame, which is that person's try for the grand prize.

Answer: Dismissal

The word "dismissal" is, of course, not even slightly limited to the confines of a courtroom -- for example, students are dismissed at the end of every class period, and again once the school day is done. Etymologically and practically, "dismiss" means "to send away." For our purposes, however, I'll discuss "dismissal" within the context of the clue I provided. Actually, when a judge dismisses a case, it can be for one of many reasons. Most commonly, a case is terminated when the person who brought the lawsuit has not met the burden of proof required to prove (to the court's satisfaction) what they allege has happened. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is the most-difficult standard of proof; in different types of cases, the threshold may be much lower, such as a "preponderance of the evidence."

Other things may also trigger a dismissal. For example, if the judge finds that a procedural error has occurred (that is, something did not follow the established rules or procedures according to what the legal system requires); or if the lawsuit is simply deemed frivolous and/or without merit.

A somewhat lesser-known fact is that in some instances, a case may be dismissed "without prejudice." We won't visit this realm but briefly as it gets quite complicated in a hurry, but more or less, "dismissed without prejudice" means the judge has allowed that a particular case can be re-filed and re-tried in the future -- it's a way of clearly indicating that the dismissal was not a final judgment on the merits of the case. (There's an interesting, longer conversation about how this is reconciled with the protection from "double jeopardy," but again, this goes far beyond the scope of our discussion.)

Answer: Severance

Originating from the Latin word meaning "to separate," the word "severance" tends to conjure up various unpleasant mental images of scenarios we'd rather not go through. Whether it's at work or in a friendship, I think everyone knows what it's like to "sever ties." Ever had a company decide to let you go? It's often abrupt and unceremonious. So it is with personal relationships, in many cases. It's often a really bitter pill to swallow, partly because it has a real sort of finality to it. It's not hard to move past a relationship you never had the chance to develop, but when it's someone you've come to know, well -- just think of the phrase "sever ties." If it hurts, it's because there's a break, a cutting, of the very ties that once bound you and someone else together.

Admittedly, however, sometimes that severance is necessary for one's own well-being. Suppose your job is a thankless, perpetually stressful, unfulfilling one. Quite possibly it's worth extricating yourself from that environment and finding a company that's actually enjoyable to work for. As for a friend or acquaintance -- well, I won't belabor the point; you can extrapolate. All people owe it to themselves to decide whether a given relationship, of any kind, is doing more harm than good -- and then deciding what to do.

As for severance pay, it's kind of a murky area. Personally, I've seen some folks who felt borderline insulted -- I recall one person who muttered, "For as long as I've been here, this paltry sum, this pittance, is meager compensation for all the years of loyal work I've given to this place." (It's a slight paraphrase, but you get the drift.) With some entities, though -- especially if they themselves are going through cutbacks, financial losses, or even the shuttering of a business -- they don't necessarily enjoy having to let good employees go, but they (the companies) may well make a good-faith effort to try to give a modicum of support to help people with a difficult transition.

Answer: Terminus

To be very clear, there are a couple reasons why "terminal" was not included as an alternate correct answer. First, since they don't end with the same letter, only the S of "terminus," the intended word, fits. Also, while these are very much very similar words both etymologically and in meaning, they are not truly synonymous. More properly, a terminal is a building itself, and for that matter, one from which various forms of transportation both begin and end. By contrast, "terminus" really is like the title of this quiz: "the end of the line." It's where the given line of a rail service's route ends.

I find "terminus" to be another of those 'ending' words with an evocative quality -- it has an almost lonely feel to it. Maybe it's partly from having watched the "Twilight Zone" episode "A Stop at Willoughby" -- the ultimate terminus. For those who have never seen it, it's well worth watching, but I won't spoil it; I'll just say it's about a man who gets on a train that -- for him -- makes its final stop at a town that's not on any rail map.

Anyway, both "terminus" and "terminal" -- and for good measure, "terminate" -- pretty obviously come from the same root. Specifically, the Latin word means "limit" or "boundary", and it's rather interesting how close the modern-day words are to the originals in meaning. Oftentimes, a root word in Latin (or Greek, or Hebrew, or etc) meant one thing, and its English "descendant" is less of a literal interpretation and more sort of a new meaning that was extrapolated and repurposed.

Answer: Twilight

Many people who know me know I'm a lifelong opera aficionado. Richard Wagner could be considered an acquired taste. In particular, consider his "Ring Cycle" -- a quaternary (a four-part work) -- by far his most massive undertaking. It requires nearly a hundred musicians in the orchestra pit. Wagner's scores tend to be unconventional and "heavy", full of leitmotifs, and a single Wagner opera can reach five hours -- everything is truly epic in scale.

All well and good, but what does this have to do with the clue or the word? Well, in the Ring Cycle, the final opera is "Gotterdammerung" -- in German, literally, "Twilight of the Gods." Without getting into excessive detail, the entire Ring Cycle is a retelling of events described in Norse mythology, and it culminates in a cataclysmic fire that engulfs the realm of the gods, who perish in the inferno.

Now, back to "twilight." We hear it much more often used in such titles as "The Twilight Zone" and the "'Twilight' saga" (which I am personally quite tired of hearing about, but I digress). In real life, of course, "twilight" is that short, ethereal-feeling time after sunset, when the sun is now below the horizon but some rays of light still scatter up through the atmosphere -- a "residual illumination," if you will -- and so there's this fleeting, ephemeral period as the last of the light fades away, transitioning into the nighttime darkness.

Needless to say, it's easy to imagine how the word "twilight," and what it refers to, easily made its way into literary usage as a figurative word for basically anything that could be described as fading away -- such as into obscurity -- and generally yielding, or giving way, to something else. So it is with Wagner's choice to describe the gods' destruction, as their "twilight" -- because really, the ending -- their downfall -- is the end of the 'old order' of powerful, vengeful, often-arrogant deities. More to the point, the notion is that their dominance ends, or fades away, and gives way to humans to forge their own paths, to shape their own destiny.

Answer: Sarcophagi

Of all the different words that I've chosen for some connection to a type of ending or conclusion, I think there's little doubt that "sarcophagi" (or the singular, "sarcophagus") has the eeriest, most unsettling feel, both as a word and as an actual object. "Stone coffin" doesn't exactly help matters -- and to top it all off, it comes from an Ancient Greek phrase "lithos sarkophagos", which literally means "flesh-eating stone." They believed that the limestone these coffins were made of accelerated the decomposition. (Thanks to AlphaDictionary for helping "flesh out" some of these lovely details.)

A quiz like this is no place to start getting morbidly philosophical about death, so as much as there's a certain fascination with the idea of getting into an involved discussion of the myriad different views of death, I think it only proper to keep this at arm's length and only offer a few brief observations. Without intending to overgeneralize, I suppose the predominant view of death is that it is simply a natural occurrence that eventually happens to all living organisms. Where people get into differing beliefs is in the realm of the spiritual.

A thought-provoking quote from the always-relevant author Marilyn vos Savant: "Even if death is not a final end, it is at least an intermission from which none of us return." That is, there's little debate that anything that can live, can and will die, as far as its physical existence. The realm that we won't get into is the one full of myriad beliefs about what, if anything, follows physical death.

By the way, it occurs to me that another use of "sarcophagus" -- which I've always felt macabre-sounding -- is that which is found at the site of the Chernobyl disaster -- itself definitely a matter that just evokes all manner of disturbing thoughts. To be clear, this is a colossal steel-and-concrete construction that was built to "entomb" the destroyed Reactor #4. Wikipedia says that this shelter is just called the "Shelter Structure" or "covering" in Ukrainian and Russian, respectively. I guess you could think of it as akin to a massive coffin; but I have to wonder who first thought of nicknaming it a "sarcophagus."

Answer: Cathartic

All right, here's a breath of fresh air: With this word we'll shift away from grim kinds of endings and instead transition to one with some decidedly happier, more uplifting connotations. By the way, as noted with one of the other words, only one form of the word was able to be an acceptable answer here -- hence why the hint "an adjective." That said, "catharsis" and "cathartic" are both from Ancient Greek for "purging, cleansing." Tell you what, let's put it this way: If "catharsis" means the actual emotional change or release that occurs, then "cathartic" describes or refers to the catalyst that brings about that change.

Anyway, it's interesting -- as I was reading up a bit on the words, I saw notes that one particular sense of the term had been used by Aristotle, the philosopher. In a nutshell, his idea was that to watch a dramatic play, like a tragedy, had the potential to be cathartic. Why? Well, let's jump into the modern world. I think it's fair to say that most of us have, at least once in our lives, watched or heard something that moved us emotionally, even to tears -- an opera with a heartrendingly tragic ending; a particularly poignant song that perhaps reminded us of something or someone we love, or whose presence we miss; maybe a movie that evoked such emotion -- happy, sad, or bittersweet -- that we couldn't help but feel moved by it.

I think Aristotle had something like this in mind: The role of "theatre", in part, allows us to be "witness" to something, and to feel the natural emotional reaction (whether humor or sadness) to whatever was just portrayed -- but then to be able to come away not only having had the chance for an emotion to find an outlet, but also to remember that whatever the audience saw, they knew it was only a performance -- a story -- not something that happened in real life.

Moving on, I do want to clarify that this is only part of the whole discussion that could be had about that which is "cathartic." To avoid elongating the discussion too far, let me say this. Quite obviously, it's not just artistic or dramatic portrayals that bring about emotions! Even the smallest things can touch us. For some people, it's witnessing something beautiful or delicate in nature; for others, maybe the calmness of the moonlight at night. Or an old photo ... a heart-to-heart discussion or reunion with a friend ... well, that's enough examples. (It would be QUITE a list if we tried to enumerate "all the things that can trigger our feelings," wouldn't it!)

But really, I think these cathartic experiences offer us a way to process emotions, heal wounds, and find solace amidst life's challenges. To quote Blaise Pascal, a scientist and philosopher, "The heart has its reasons that reason does not know." Sometimes when we least realize it (or admit it), we really need that catalyst -- something to allow us to express strong, pent-up feelings -- sort of like the saying that in times of loss, "people need to be able to grieve." And ultimately, the experience isn't sad or morbid or whatnot; when that release happens, what's really important is that liberation it gives -- that purging of, that *freedom* from, that which has been on our heart for so long. THAT'S the beauty of that which is cathartic: It's the end of something, all right, and by the same token, that which ends and goes away ... it yields and makes space for something new and to come in its place, because we've been purified of that which had been keeping us trapped or chained.

Answer: Vanquish

To me, "vanquish" is one of those words that gets interesting -- if also complex -- pretty quickly. But just to tie up a loose end first: As you likely deduced, the shorter word (the "synonym for disappear") I had in mind was "vanish" -- just tack on the Q-U and you get a whole new word. I've always loved seeing examples, whether in English or in other languages, of the various curiosities and idiosyncracies of of spelling, semantics and linguistics in general can often lead to weird little overlaps and changes.

And what's funny about it is that these words, for as close as they seem in English, are actually totally unrelated at their root -- other than both coming from Latin. "Vanish" ultimately goes to "vanus" (meaning "empty"), while "vanquish" is from "vinco," meaning "I defeat, I conquer." With the latter, arguably the most famous form of this word is in Caesar's quote "veni, vidi, vici," which is of course "I came, I saw, I conquered." I find myself thinking with a chuckle, "And he had no idea that he was coining a catchy 'slogan'!" Julius Caesar -- this tremendously important figure -- uttered three simple words, never imagining they'd echo through the ages.

And it's actually quite relevant to take note that our English word "vanquish" goes back to here, because Caesar knew exactly what he was saying in referring to this, the Battle of Zela. As most any good source (e.g., the New World Encyclopedia) attests, this wasn't just any battle -- it was a juggernaut. This was an extraordinary display of military might. So decisive and utter was the victory that Caesar's pithy phrase was the perfect way to describe it. "I came, I saw, I conquered" wasn't just a simple description; it was frankly a verbal masterstroke that made clear he hadn't just bested the opposing army -- he vanquished them. He was being emphatic.

To me, just the very word "vanquish" echoes with power. It's not used lightly. It leaves no question that an opposing or adversarial force was completely and crushingly defeated. This isn't a half-bad place to bring back our friend "vanish" into the discussion again, because to be vanquished is not merely to be bested; it's to have one's power, influence, strength more or less eradicated -- for all intents and purposes, they vanish. This is why "vanquish" fascinates me so, because it reflects the fact that a sufficiently overwhelming victory can have profound consequences.

Answer: Telestich

Well, this is it -- the true "end of the line," in more ways than one. The last letter of the first nine answers, as you can see, yields T-E-L-E-S-T-I-C-H. Those of you who are really into acrostics may be previously acquainted with the word. So let's break down the various elements that brought this sort of "novelty" quiz into being.

Now, there are at least a handful of traditional acrostic quizzes here and there. Here's a quick glance at the normal definition, and what that word means. The Online Etymology Dictionary lends a hand here: At the root is "akrostikhis" (a transliteration) -- a compound word made from two Ancient Greek words. One is "akro-", a prefix meaning "outermost, at the end, at the extremity"; the other is "stikhos," meaning "line, row."

Acrostics have existed (as a literary device) since antiquity, but there's no evidence to suggest there was a special term for them back then. Which is to say, "akrostikhis / acrostic" is only a few centuries old -- it's a reconstructed term. Our focus, "telestich", retains the "stikhos" part but the first part is from "telos," which in Ancient Greek means "end." This is simply rewritten as "tele-" to create a "combining form."

Okay -- enough etymology for one lifetime, right?! I said a couple times that this was "an acrostic with a twist." And when I created this quiz, I wanted to be accurate in my terminology. Well, there are lots of types of acrostics, but most properly, a normal one is the formation of a word or phrase from the first letters -- like in lines of poetry. (There are even some famous acrostics in the Bible, such as in Psalms.) And some of our quizzes here use the format called "9 for 10," where you find one letter from each of nine clues.

But I didn't want to just have people try to solve solely for individual letters -- I wanted those letters to come from actual words to be solved. And I thought, "What if these letters came from the END of each word instead of from the start? And how can I bolster the connection?" I recalled having heard of a "telestich" -- a TYPE of acrostic that uses final letters. Ergo, "I know: I'll make 'telestich' itself -- happily, nine letters -- be the 'final word'! And when I tell people to solve each word and note the last letter from each, I'll use words that each represent a type of 'ending' or 'conclusion.'"

So it's sort of self-referential -- this quiz itself IS a telestich -- and that's the word being formed from the last letter of words related to endings. Hence the title "It's the End of the Line for You" -- an idiom that means, "This is where things stop. It's over." "Telestich" not only literally translates to "end-line" but also is what I was doing -- the final word would, in effect, "spell itself out" -- the last letter of the words would yield that very word for something formed in this manner.

Did I expect most people to know what an acrostic is? No, but some do. Did I expect most people to know what a telestich is? Again no, but that was why all the clues and instructions were laid out -- so that even if the word wasn't necessarily familiar, you'd still be able to arrive at it by solving the others.

One last note here: Speaking of endings or finality, this is the last quiz I'll have written -- not ever, but within "The Random Idea Chamber," which Kyle (aka kyleisalive) has carefully curated for ten years, using various forms of constrained-writing prompts to challenge authors to go (far) beyond their comfort zones. As this is being written in the days leading up to TRIC's own conclusion, it is to Kyle that I dedicate this quiz. Thank you for your dedication both to TRIC and to the other ways in which you encourage people to foster their writing abilities.