What is the origin of the word 'quiz'? The story goes that a
Dublin theatre proprietor by the name of Richard Daly made a bet
that he could, within forty-eight hours, make a nonsense word
known throughout the city, and that the public would supply a
meaning for it. After a performance one evening, he gave his
staff cards with the word 'quiz' written on them, and told them
to write the word on walls around the city. The next day the
strange word was the talk of the town, and within a short time
it had become part of the language. The most detailed account of
this supposed exploit (in F. T. Porter's Gleanings and
Reminiscences, 1875) gives its date as 1791. The word, however,
was already in use by then, meaning 'an odd or eccentric
person', and had been used in this sense by Fanny Burney in her
diary entry for 24 June 1782. 'Quiz' was also used as a name for
a kind of toy, something like a yo-yo, which was popular around
1790. The word is nevertheless hard to account for, and so is
its later meaning of 'to ques