Baking Bread Trivia Quiz

Answer: Roman

The "bread" part of bread and circuses consisted of food handouts to the needy. While the term "circenses" used by Juvenal has been translated literally as "circuses," which refers primarily to chariot races in the Circus Maximus, many other sources translate it to include other forms of entertainment, such as gladiatorial games in the Colosseum, as well as entertainment in religious festivals called "ludi." Encyclopedia Britannica states, "the 'circuses' were public games and other mass spectacles." The "American Heritage Dictionary" also uses the term "public games" in reference to Juvenal's quote.

Answer: The 1930s

Life in the USA in the Thirties was dominated by the Great Depression, during which unemployment rates in many areas of the country were as high as 30 to 50 percent of non-farm workers. The dispensing of food via breadlines was common in many large cities and was often carried out by both private and government entities.

Answer: Knowing which side your bread is buttered on

Knowing which side one's bread is buttered on means to be loyal to whomever one relies on, usually meaning one's boss or employer. Of course, the same thing applies to married men, when the "butter" may be emotional, rather than financial.

"Cast your bread upon the waters for you will find it after many days." is found in Ecclesiastes 11:1.

Deuteronomy 16:3 says, "Seven days you shall eat...the bread of affliction--for you came out of Egypt in haste..."

"I am the bread of life" is found in John 6:35.

Answer: Dead

According to "The Urban Dictionary," the usage could occur as a threat, for example: "You're brown bread, sunshine," meaning "I'm going to kill you." Or it could also mean just plumb wore out, as in, "I'm brown bread after all that hassle."

The same reference is made in internet slang sites and idiom sites such as "The Free Dictionary" online.

Cockney rhyming slang originated in the early 1800s in London's East End. However, rhyming slang is not limited to England's capital, but is also prevalent in the rest of the United Kingdom, as well as Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

Answer: Pennsylvania

The Bread Colonies were the four Middle Colonies: New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. It was in these colonies that most of the colonial wheat was planted. The New England colonies (Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire) were dominated by small farms, which were not conducive to the large-scale farming needed for large surpluses of wheat, such as that found in the Middle Colonies.

In the South, agriculture took place primarily on plantations, which were dominated in colonial times there by tobacco, rice, and indigo, all of which did well in the southern climate.

Answer: Part of a harsh punishment

Bread and water is most commonly associated with an added harshness for jail or prison inmates who misbehave or cause other problems. A bread-and-water regimen is not conducive to comfortable jail time.

When I was a child in the Fifties living in a small trailer in rural South Carolina, my brother and I adopted a young crow we'd found. We fed it bread and water. It was not a pet for long.

While the Tuareg of North Africa do eat a flat bread called taguella, they also include several other foods in their diet, such as millet porridge, dairy products from goat and camel milk including cheese and yogurt, tea, and a beer-like beverage called eghajira. Other desert nomads no doubt have diets with similar degrees of variety more than just bread and water.

Alois Grimm is a figment of my imagination.

Answer: As a thank-you note to follow up on a visit

A bread-and-butter letter is a courtesy extended to friends or relatives after a stay or visit. Although the term is believed to have originated in North America, its use has extended to the UK, as well. The usage reflects the concept that bread and butter refers to how one earns his keep, and that that hospitality was also extended to the visitor, who then shows appreciation for the same.

Answer: All of these

"Breadbasket" has been used as an idiom since the mid-18th Century, and even longer in reference to an actual basket for carrying bread or rolls. Although originally meaning the stomach in the sense of the digestive organ, nowadays it also refers to the general area of the midsection.

The term also refers to not only a nation's region of wheat production, but also in many cases, a nation's region of its main production of any or all foods, since "bread" can be generally applied to any sustaining food. In America's colonial period, the Middle Colonies were characterized as a "breadbasket," but in more modern times America's Bread Belt was the Great Plains from Texas to North Dakota.

Answer: Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus is quoted in John 6:35 as saying, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." This is what he told a large gathering of people beside the Sea of Galilee the day after he fed the 5,000 on five loaves and two fish, on the other side of the sea. He goes on to repeat himself in verse 6:48, saying, "I am that bread of life" and in 6:51, "I am the bread of life that came down from heaven."

"I Am the Bread of Life" has also been written as a hymn, as well as Christian popular music. One version was written by S. Suzanne Toolan in 1971 and another by John Michael Talbot in 2015.

Answer: Money

One reference dates "bread" meaning "money" to 1935, originating in criminal slang, based on the same idea with "dough." Another source credits the usage to a Jazz artist named Lester Young, according to historian Phil Schaap. It is believed by many that Young not only coined the term "bread" for money, but that he also was the first to use the term "cool" as a term of approval.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that "bread" held a meaning of "livelihood" going back to the early 18th Century, with the "money" aspect arriving in the 1930s.