"Four" (or More) Ways to Say That... Quiz

Answer: vier

The wrong answers given above are all ways to say "five": "five" is English, "cinco" is Spanish, and "cinq" is French. Only "vier" is a way to say "four" in both Dutch and German. The two languages also share many other words, including the one for "drunk", which is "Trunk".

There is an expression in English for being extremely drunk that starts with the word "Four", "Four sheets to the wind". This strange turn of phrase is actually nautical slang, where the "sheets" don't refer to "bed coverings", but "ropes", and the number of "sheets" is the degree of drunkenness of a sailor. One "sheet" is tipsy, two "sheets" is feeling good, three "sheets" is drunk as a skunk, and four "sheets" is passed-out, knockdown drunk.

Answer: cuatro

All of the words listed are in Spanish, but only "cuatro" means "four". "Cuarenta" is "forty", "catorce" is "fourteen", and "cuarzo" is "quartz".

College students are known in many countries of the world for drinking a lot and for eating a lot and at strange hours. In the U.S., there is an expression for another meal eaten after the traditional "dinner" or "supper", called "fourth meal". Most US college students look forward to it and college towns cater to them with establishments being open late and even delivering food until two, three or four in the morning. If you wanted to say "fourth meal" in Spanish, it would be "la cuarta comida".

Answer: True

"Fire" is indeed the word for "four" in Danish, and it is also a "four-letter word", as is the word "four" itself. In English, many curse words or tabboo words that are not said in polite company are four letters long. Though "fire" is a four-letter Danish word, it is not impolite at all!

Answer: dort

The word for "four" in Turkish is "dort" (note that diacritics cannot be used in quizzes). The other words listed are Turkish, but mean different things, "esek" means "donkey" (and can be used as an insult), "misir" means "corn" but is also the same as the word for the country "Egypt"), and "uzak" means "far".

There is an expression in English, to be "on all fours", which means "to be crawling around" (not on your two legs but on all four limbs). I once found myself on all fours in Istanbul, Turkey, and it was for a very good reason. I was inspecting a beautiful Turkish rug that I wanted to buy as a surprise for my family. The close inspection was worth it, and the rug fit into my suitcase when I rolled it up, so it was a great purchase.

Answer: quatro

All of the words listed are in Portuguese, but only "quatro" means "four". "Quarenta" is "forty", "catorze" is "fourteen", and "quartzo" is "quartz".

One of my friends from Portugal had a grandmother who never left her house, she loved staying within her "four walls" or "quatro paredes". When someone wants to tell you a secret, there is an expression in English containing the word "four", "Between you and me and these four walls", meaning that no one else can hear what is going to be said. There is also an expression "the walls have ears", however, so you should always be careful telling secrets!

Answer: char

All of the words listed are in Hindi, but only "char" means "four". "Chalis" is "forty", "chaodah" is "fourteen", and "chhota" is "small".

Hindi is a language of India, and it represents an ancient and powerful culture. There is ancient Indian variant of the game of chess called "chartur-raji" (note, there are several accepted spellings of the old game, and only one is given here) or "The Four Rajahs", which uses four different kings or rajahs, whose moves were goverened by throws of the dice. Though the game no longer survives, the expression remains, and was even adopted as the name of a popular musical group in the early 2000s.

Answer: quatre

All of the words listed are in French, but only "quatre" means "four". "Quarante" is "forty", "quatorze" is "fourteen", and "quartz", interestingly enough, is "quartz".

During the American Revolution, the US received important support by the French, who were 100% behind our efforts to achieve independence. There is an expression in English with the word "four" that is a good expression of this type of unconditional support, "to be four-square behind someone or something".

Answer: False

The word for "four" in Latin is actually "quattuor", and "quadraginta" means "forty".

The bases and beliefs of today's modern medicine owe a lot to the Greco-Roman traditions, of which the Greek physician Hippocrates is the most famous proponent. Interestingly enough, our records of Hippocrates' medicine exist largely in Latin and not in his native Greek. A cornerstone of medical knowledge in ancient Greco-Roman times was "the four humors", black bile (representing earth), yellow bile (representing fire), phlegm (representing water), and blood (representing air).

Answer: quattro

"Four" is "quattro" in Italian, and one famous Italian explorer who hoped to travel "the four corners of the globe" by leaving Spain across the then-uncharted waters to the West and arriving in the Indies in the East, was Christopher Columbus. Though his sense of orientation was correct, his sense of scale was off, and he ran into a huge obstacle that he did not anticipate... the New World!

Answer: negy

All of the numbers given are in Hungarian, but only "negy" means "four", "egy" is "one", "ketto" is "two" (and can be expressed as "ket" before a noun), and "harom" is "three".

A fitting inclusion to this quiz mentioning expressions with "four" is the idiom "the four winds". It can mean that something is irretrievably lost (as when it is "scattered to the four winds") or it can refer to things brought together from all parts of the world. The expression in Hungarian is "szelrozsa minden iranyaba".