Words I Didn't Know Trivia Quiz

Answer: Elephant shrew

Well, of course, they are DISTANT relatives, to be sure. Sengis do often have long snouts, though. Wikipedia, for example, places elephant shrews into "a superorder Afrotheria" which includes hyraxes, aardvarks, and elephants. Go figure. Sengis only occur in Africa and occur within the Family Macroscelididae, which has four genuses.

Answer: A legal term for the range of an abstract concept

Although the term ambit can be used outside of legal terminology, I have never come across it. In the 14th Century it referred to the space surrounding a building or town.

Answer: An amoeba-like animal

Actually, the sun reference is not completely wrong, as heliozoans are commonly known as sun-animalcules. Animalcules are microscopic animals. So these little guys are like amoebas with arms radiating out of their bodies, like rays of the sun.

Answer: A nut-producing South American tree

The souari is an evergreen that produces large edible nuts that yield an oil for cooking. Also known as the swarri nut, these drupe nuts are similar to Brazil nuts, but much larger and richer in taste. The souari is also known as piquia butter or paradise butter, or the guiana nut.

Answer: Bovine excrement (i.e., a cowpie)

There is a myriad of uses for this wonderful stuff, many of which are still used around the world just about every day. It has been used for fuel for as long as cattle have been domesticated, first for fires and in modern times for generating electricity.

In Africa it has been used to repel insects and as building material to replace wood and as insulation. And in Oklahoma, cow chips have been used as a sport for cow chip throwing.

Answer: Where alluvial fans from streams come together on a slope

When a stream flows downhill it picks up alluvial material, and when this occurs seasonally in drier mountainous areas, the material is deposited when slopes level out. When more than one such stream delta come together, the result is a bajada.

Answer: Dried leaves of wormseed, used in cooking

Wormseed is the common name for dysphania ambrosioides, also sometimes called Mexican tea or Jesuit's tea. It is a medicinal herb from Central and South America which can also be used for cooking.

Answer: A Norwegian sailboat

The International Yngling Association calls the craft an "agreeable cross between a planing dinghy and a keelboat." Norway's Jan Herman Linge designed the first such boat in 1967 for his young son and used the Norwegian term for "youngster" to describe it.

Yngling is also the name of Scandinavia's oldest dynasty, dating back to the early 1200s and referring to clans known as the Scylfings. Three of the kings appearing in "Beowulf" were rulers of such clans.

Answer: A flat-topped undersea mountain

Also known as a tablemount, guyots are the flattened tops of submerged volcanoes whose tops are generally around 600 feet (200 meters) below the ocean's surface. They are often found in the Pacific and appear to have once extended above sea level and then gradually subsided to their present depths.

Answer: Pigmented skin patch

A lentigo is a liver spot or sun spot on the skin, similar to a large freckle. More often seen as people get to middle age and later, it is the result of increased melanin with increased exposure to the sun and is benign.