I Invented This Word Trivia Quiz

Answer: Lewis Carroll

The word chortle appeared in both the book "Through the Looking Glass" and the poem "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll in 1871. It captures the sound of the laughter from chuckle and snort.

Answer: John Milton

Pandemonium derives from root words for "all" and "devil". Milton named "Pandemonium" as the capital city of Hell in "Paradise Lost".

Answer: Richard Sheridan

Mrs. Malaprop was a character in Richard Sheridan's play "The Rival". She frequently used words for a comic effect that had an incorrect meaning, but sounded similar to the correct word. The word "malaprop" itself was derived from the French phrase "mal a propos", meaning poorly placed.

Answer: Karel Capek

The Czech writer Karel Capek introduced the word "robot" in his 1920 hit play "RUR". The word was derived from the Slavic word "robotna", meaning slave or serf. The robots were created to perform tasks humans no longer wanted to do. The robots were similar to humans, but lacked feelings and a soul.

Answer: Thomas More

More coined the word "utopia" as an ideal fictional island for his book "Utopia". The Greek roots of "utopia" mean nowhere, but interestingly "utopia" could also be a pun of the Greek word "eu" and "topia", meaning a good place.

In the book, Utopia was a fictional island off the coast of South America that had an ideal society and living conditions.

Answer: Dr. Seuss

In Seuss's book "If I Ran the Zoo', the book's narrator Gerald McGrew claims he would "collect a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker" for his imaginary zoo. In about a year the word had been transformed into a slang usage as a "square", eventually coming to connote a bookish and socially inept person.

Answer: Jonathan Swift

The Yahoos, one of the races Gulliver encountered in "Gulliver's Travels", were a brutish and degraded people. The word yahoo often was used to refer to rural, unsophisticated people - particularly those from the southern U.S.

Answer: Sir Walter Scott

The first known written usage of the word "freelance" occurred in Scott's book "Ivanhoe". It referred to the paid soldiers in a feudal lord's army. In many cases the soldiers had no natural allegiance and were mercenaries or soldiers of fortune.

The word "freelance" is now free of its military meaning and is generally used for workers who have no set allegiance, but work independently or only for short periods with an employer.

Answer: J. R. R. Tolkien

The word "tween" has always been used as a shortened version of "between".

In Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", it was used for the irresponsible time between the childhood of the Hobbit and coming of age at 33. The word "tween" is now more generally used for the period just before a child becomes a teenager.

Answer: James Joyce

The word "quark" occurred in James Joyce's work "Finnegans Wake" in a line that contained the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark".

When physicist Murray Gell-Mann proposed the concept for subatomic particles, he originally wanted to use one of his favorite nonsense words, "kwork", for them. When he came across the line from Joyce, he thought it appropriate since the subatomic particles came in groups of three - although he still preferred a pronunciation that would have rhymed with work.

Answer: Richard Dawkins

"Meme" was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene". It is an idea, behavior, or style that is spread within a culture by imitation. Supporters of the idea of memes consider them analogous to genes that self-replicate, mutate, and respond to external pressures.

Answer: Francois Rabelais

In the 16th century, French humorist François Rabelais wrote a satirical series of novels about the adventures of two giants: Pantagruel and his father, Gargantua. The word "gargantuan" has come to mean anything of tremendously large size.

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

Tintinnabulation is the lingering sound of a bell after it has been struck. It can be traced to the Latin word for bell. In his poem "The Bells", Poe celebrates the sonic overtones of the bell with this invented word, made very clear by the repeated "bells, bells, bells ..." in the first verse of the poem.

Answer: George Orwell

George Orwell coined "doublethink" as part of the fictional language of "newspeak" in his novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Doublethink is a form of indoctrination whereby the subject is expected to accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as true.

Answer: Vladimir Nabokov

The word nymphet, meaning a small nymph, had become obsolete by the time Nabokov used it in his novel "Lolita". He used it as a sexually attractive young girl, usually precociously so - which has become the modern usage.