Words Too Easily Confused, Set Eight Quiz

Answer: Irascible

"I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible." ~Ezra Pound.

The adjective "irascible" entered English from the Old French in the 14th Century. The French derived it from the Late Latin "irascibilis" which was built upon the Latin "irasci" meaning to be angry. Compare the use of "ire" for anger in Modern English. Think of irascible as being more fierce than irritable.

Answer: Iridescent

"Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss.... But every once in a while, you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare." ~Wendelin Van Draanen, "Flipped."

The adjective "iridescent" comes from the Latin "iridis" meaning rainbow, thus its plain meaning is "rainbow-coloured."

Answer: Irenaeus

"Among them too Irenaeus, writing in the name of the Christians whose leader he was in Gaul, ... recommends that the mystery of the Lord's resurrection be observed only on the Lord's day... " ~Eusebius, "The Ecclesiastical Histories."

Irenaeus was the Bishop of Lugdunum in the Roman Province of Gaul which is modern-day Lyon in France.

The name Irenaeus is a Latinized form of the Greek name "Eirenaios" which means "peaceful."

Answer: Irradiate

"A food irradiator ... is as different from a nuclear reactor as a flashlight battery is from an electric generating plant." ~ Robert Wolke, "What Einstein Told His Cook."

The verb "irradiate" has many meanings: to shed light upon, to bring to spiritual or intellectual awareness, to heat with radiant energy, or to bombard with radiation as in food preservation.

Answer: Irrational

"There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational." ~Albert Ellis.

The adjective "irrational" dates, in English, from the 15th Century. It is a combination of the Latin prefix "in-" meaning "not, without, the opposite of" and the Latin "rationalis" meaning "reasonable, calculated, grounded."

Answer: Iridectomy

"About 60% of patients who have had conventional iridectomies consider the operation a success; 15%, on the other hand, maintain that their vision was better before the procedure. Fortunately for patients, melanoma of the iris is a relatively slow-growing form of cancer; it metastasizes to the liver in only 2-4% of cases. If treated promptly, it has a high survival rate of 95-97% after five years." ~ The Encyclopedia of Surgery, © 2016 Merriam-Webster.

The base noun "iri" is a shortened form of "iris" which it the Latin word for the coloured diaphragm around the pupil of the eye. "-ectomy" is a Latin suffix meaning "surgical removal." This came from the older Greek "eltemnein" which means "to cut out."

Answer: Iridium

"The first impact tracer linked to a severe mass extinction was an unearthly concentration of iridium, an element that is rare in rocks on our planet's surface but abundant in many meteorites." ~Luann Becker, "Repeated Blows" Scientific American, March 2002, p. 78.

Iridium, a metallic element (Ir) with an atomic number of 77, is the second densest element and the most corrosion-resistant. It was discovered in 1803 and named "iridium" by Smithson Tennant, the discoverer, after the Greek goddess Iris, who is a messenger to the gods and the goddess of the rainbow.

Answer: Irrigate

"Someday men will learn to irrigate and spread fertilizer instead of praying for fertility." ~ Warren Eyster, "The Goblins of Eros."

The English verb "irrigate" derives from the Latin "irrigatus" which has several meanings: "to water, to flood, to refresh." It has been used since the middle of the 15th Century.

Answer: Irenic

"An irenic approach to expounding Christian beliefs is one that attempts always to understand opposing viewpoints before disagreeing, and when it is necessary to disagree does so respectfully and in love." ~ Roger E. Olson, "The Mosaic of Christian Belief: Twenty Centuries of Unity & Diversity."

The adjective "irenic" derives from the Greek "eirenikos" meaning peace or peacetime and has appeared in English since the mid-17th Century.

Answer: Irrawaddy

"We took our chanst among the Khyber 'ills,
The Boers knocked us silly at a mile,
The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills,
An' a Zulu 'impi' dished us up in style."
~Rudyard Kipling, "Fuzzy Wuzzy"

The Irrawaddy River or Ayeyarwady River or Ayeyarwaddy River was named by the Burmese who derived the name from the name of another river in another language called Pali.