Sexy Words Trivia Quiz

Answer: A person in their 60s

A sexagenarian is person between the ages of 60 and 69. One hundred years ago, becoming a sexagenarian was something of an accomplishment. Today, most people eventually become sexagenarians. If you make it to 70, then you become a septuagenarian. In the United States, if you become a sexagenarian, you have an 84.7% chance of reaching age 70 if you are a man; if you are a woman, it's 89.2%.

Answer: Unisex

The word unisex first appeared in print in 1966. It was soon applied to clothing, hairstyles, fragrances, tote bags, and many other items. In some parts of the United States there are even unisex restrooms! Marketing an item as being unisex obviously has its advantages, because it doubles the size of a retailer's potential market. Today one sometimes hears the term "gender neutral" used in place of unisex.

Answer: Astrologer

A sextile in a horoscope refers a situation where two planets or other bodies are separated by 60 degrees. For example, if your horoscope shows that your moon is located in 10 degrees Aries, and Jupiter is in 10 degrees Gemini, your moon would be sextile Jupiter. In astrology, these relationships are called aspects. The sextile is usually viewed as a favorable aspect.

Answer: Sexagesimal

Sexagesimal is a rarely encountered word meaning "of, relating to, or based on the number 60." So one could have a sexagesimal collection of cats. The most common use of the word, however, is to refer to a numbering system with sixty as its base. The ancient Babylonians used a sexagesimal system. One advantage of this system is that 60 is a number that can be evenly divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60, which supposedly made it easier to work with fractions.

The reason that we have sixty minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 360 degrees in a circle dates back to the Babylonians and their sexagesimal mathematical system. I made up the other words.

Answer: 21

The reason I had to specify "in the United States" is that while Americans define a sextillion as 10 to the 21st power, or 1 followed by 21 zeroes, in some countries it means 1 followed by 36 zeroes. This is the sort of thing that makes me want to avoid having anything to do with mathematics. Fortunately, the word is seldom encountered. One of the few examples I have found is that the mass of the Earth is 5.98 sextillion metric tons, and its volume is 1.085 sextillion cubic meters.

Answer: Navigation

A sextant is an instrument used to measure the angles between celestial objects and their altitude above the horizon. The information can be used to determine a ship's location at sea. Using a sextant to determine one's position is called celestial navigation. Today, of course, sailors are more likely to rely on the Global Positioning System (GPS) to steer their ships, but many still know how to use a sextant as a backup, in case of instrument malfunctions or power failures.

Answer: Measuring grain and liquids

A sextarius was a unit of volume, used for both dry and liquid measures. If measuring grain, the sextarious was equal to 1/16 of a modius, or 1/48 of an amphora. If measuring liquids, it equaled 1/6 of a congius, or approximately a pint or half a liter. In Latin, the word "sex" means six. The Romans also once minted a bronze coin called a sextans, which was equal to 1/6 of an as.

Answer: Digging graves

In Elizabethan times, a sexton was a church official who was in charge of maintaining the church building and the surrounding grounds. It was customary for people to be buried either within the church, or in the churchyard, so one of the sexton's chief duties was digging graves, A sexton appears in William Shakespeare's play, "Hamlet".

Some churches still employ sextons today, but their duties are usually confined the the maintenance of the church and its physical plant. Few modern cemeteries are located adjacent to churches, so small towns and municipalities may hire a sexton to maintain the local graveyard.

Answer: True

A sexfoil is defined as "a flower design with six petals or leaves fanning out from a common center." Imagine a clover with six leaves instead of three. "Foil" is a word meaning leaf. The sexfoil is sometimes used in heraldry, although it is not as common as the trefoil, quatrefoil, or cinquefoil. Sexfoil designs are fairly common as architectural ornaments, especially in stained glass.

Answer: Printing

Sextodecimo refers to a book that is printed on both sides of a sheet of paper, and then folded to produce 16 leaves, or 32 pages. The word can refer to the size of the pages, or to the book itself. Most sextodecimo books measure about four by six inches.