saunter

1907 photo of John Muir. An older, bearded man with a walking staff sitting on a boulder

1907 photo of John Muir. An older, bearded man with a walking staff sitting on a boulder.

29 July 2021

In present-day usage, to saunter is to walk idly or leisurely, to stroll. The etymology is uncertain, but it most likely developed from the Middle English saunteren, meaning to wonder or muse, to be in a state of reverie. Over time, the meaning shifted from mental to physical wandering. The origin of the Middle English verb is unknown.

The word first appears as a gerund—that is verb form that functions as a noun—in the first half of the fifteenth century, where it means babbling, or talking meaninglessly or idly. We find it in two of the York mystery plays—the York plays are a cycle of biblical stories from creation to the Apocalypse, each play being staged by a different guild. One of these, the Crucifixion play, was performed by the guild of pinners, that is nail-makers. In the passages from this play, a group of four Roman soldiers are discussing Christ’s guilt prior to nailing him to the cross:

IV Miles:     I hope þat he hadde bene as goode
Have sesed of sawes þat he uppe-sought.

I Miles:     Thoo sawes schall rewe hym sore,
For all his saunteryng, sone.

(4th Soldier:    I believe he would have done well to have ceased the teachings that he invented.

1st Soldier:    For all his sauntering, those teachings he shall soon sorely regret.)

(The University of Michigan’s Middle English Dictionary (MED) defines this usage as “idle chatter, babbling.” The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), in an entry from 1910, questions whether the appearances in the York play are the same word as the present-day saunter. The OED editors’ concern arises out of the notion that the idea of loitering or leisurely strolling doesn’t fit the context. But when one places it in the context of a transition from musing to babbling to walking without purpose, then it fits nicely. The OED goes on to suggest that the York plays may be verbing the noun sauntrell, which means a pretend or false saint. This suggestion fits the context, as well, but requires the invention of a verb that has no other citations of use. The OED entry is over a century old, and I suspect when it is updated for the third edition this commentary will be changed.)

The verb meaning to muse, to think idly appears by the late fifteenth century, where it can be found in the Romance of Partenay:

And when Gaffray, ualliant man and wurthy,
Had radde thys tablet, he moch meruelling;
But yut he knew noght uerray certainly,
But santred and doubted uerryly
Wher on was or no of this saide linage.

(And when Gaffrey, a valiant man and worthy, had read this tablet, he marvelled greatly; but yet he knew nothing for certain, but sauntered and doubted the truth of whether or not he was of this lineage.)

By the mid sixteenth century, the noun saunter is in place, but with the meaning of a charm or incantation. Here is a passage from William Turner’s book of herbology about the collection of seeds from a fern, in which he associates saunter with incantations used in witchcraft. But this is another case where the word, spelled saunters, may be a different word from the present-day saunter. The text in question is a translation of a Latin text, and the word being translated is preculis, meaning prayers or requests. It could refer to bogus incantations or meaningless words, or it might be an alteration of sanctus, the angelic hymn, a word taken from the opening words sanctus, sanctus, sanctus (holy, holy, holy). The text in question, which is about the seeds of ferns, or brakes, reads:

Manye brakes in some places had no sede at all / but in other places agayne: a man shall fynde sede in euerye brake / so that a man maye gather a hundred oute of one brake alone / but I went aboute this busynes / all figures / coniurynges / saunters / charmes / wytchcrafte / and sorseryes sett a syde / takynge wyth me two or three honest men to bere me co[m]panye / when I soughte this seede.

But by the mid seventeenth century, we see an unequivocal use of saunter in which the meaning has shifted from mental to physical wandering. From William Wycherley’s 1669 Hero and Leander in Burlesque:

In the mean time to th' May-pole, and the Green
She bid him go to see, and to be seen,
Or where he wou'd might saunter up and down,
And count the Signs, and fine things of the Town

And that is the sense that persists to the present day.

But saunter has a persistent false etymology that has dogged the word since the late seventeenth century. That is the idea that the word derives from the French sainte terre or holy land. According to the false etymology the French term was associated with medieval pilgrims to Palestine and gradually morphed into saunter. There is no evidence to support this etymology, and as we have seen, the physical wandering sense arises after the medieval era.

But early on, this etymology had the backing of most dictionaries. The first to plump for it was John Ray’s 1691 A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used, which defines it as:

To Santer about; or go Santering up and down. It is derived from Saincte terre, i.e. The Holy Land, because of old time when there were frequent Expeditions thither: many idle persons went from place to place, upon pretence that they had taken, or intended to take the Cross upon them, and to go thither. It signifies to idle up and down, to go loitering acount.

A few years later, the 1699 New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew has the following:

Saunter, to loiter idly, a Term borrowed from those Religious Counterfeits, who under the colour of Pilgrimages, to the Holy Land, us’d to get many Charities, crying still, Sainct Terre, Sainct terre, having nothing but the Holy Land in their Mouths, tho’s they stay’d alwaies at Home.

In 1721, in Nathan Bailey, in his Universal Etymological English Dictionary, cribs almost word for word from Ray’s earlier dictionary:

To SANTER [of Sancte Terre, F. or Sancta Terra, L. i.e., the Holy Land, because when there were frequent Expeditions to the Holy Land, many idle Persons went from Place to Place upon Pretence they had taken the Cross upon them, or intended to do so, and to go thither] to wander up and down.

And:

To SAUNTER [of sauter or sauteller, F. to dance, q.d. to dance to and fro, or of saincte terre, F.] to go idling up and down.

And Samuel Johnson’s great 1755 dictionary has:

aller à la sainte terre, from idle people who roved about the country, and asked charity under pretence of going à la sainte terre, to the holy land; or sans terre, as having no settled home.

We can forgive these early lexicographers for believing this etymology. It sounds plausible on its face, and they did not have resources to investigate that we do today. No serious lexicographer takes this etymology seriously nowadays, but it persists in the popular imagination. The persistence to the present day is largely due to two famous writers who plumped for it, Henry David Thoreau and John Muir.

In his essay Walking, posthumously published in the June 1862 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Thoreau wrote:

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that tis, of taking walks,—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer,—a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

The false etymology is not recorded in Muir’s writing, but a 1911 account by Albert Palmer has him advocating for it:

One day as I was resting in the shade Mr. Muir overtook me on the trail and began to chat in that friendly way in which he delights to talk with everyone he meets. I said to him: “Mr. Muir, someone told me you did not approve of the word 'hike,' is that so?” His blue eyes flashed, and with his Scotch accent he replied: “I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains—not ‘hike!' Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, 'A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike' through them." And John Muir lived up to his doctrine. He was usually the last man to reach camp. He never hurried. He stopped to get acquainted with individual trees along the way, he would hail people passing by and make them get down on hands and knees if necessary to examine some tiny seedling or to see the beauty of some little bed of almost microscopic flowers.

The Muir quote, in particular, can be found in memes throughout the internet, although it is unlikely that the words Palmer puts in Muir’s mouth were his exact words. The account appears sometime after the encounter, and one doubts that at the time Palmer was writing down what Muir was saying. Still, the gist of Muir’s point, including the etymology, is probably accurately recorded. It also seems likely that Muir was familiar with Thoreau’s essay, and that is probably the source of his belief.

Like the early lexicographers, we can forgive Thoreau’s and Muir’s mistake. By the sources of their day, they would not have been wrong. But we know better today. And while the Thoreau’s and Muir’s tales are charming and perhaps even poetic, that does not make them correct.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Bailey, Nathan. An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. London: E. Bell, et al., 1721. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“John Muir and ‘SAUNTER.’” Online Etymological Dictionary, 26 October 2019.  

Johnson, Samuel. Johnson’s Dictionary Online (1755). s.v. saunter, v.n.

Lancashire, Ian, ed. Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME), accessed 9 July 2021.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. saunteren, v., sauntering, ger.

A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew. London: W. Hawes, 1699, 1. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. saunter, v., sauntering, n., saunter, n.1.

Palmer, Albert W. The Mountain Trail and Its Message. Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1911, 27–28. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Ray, John. A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used. London: Christopher Wilkinson, 1691, 111. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Skeat, Walter W., ed. The Romans of Partenay. Revised ed. Early English Text Society, OS 22. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1899, lines 4650–54, 161. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.17.

Thoreau, Henry D. “Walking.” The Atlantic Monthly, 9.56, June 1862, 657. ProQuest Magazines.

Turner, William. The First and Seconde Partes of the Herbal of William Turner, second part. Cologne: Arnold Birckman, 1568, 3r–v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Walker, Greg. “York (The Pinners), The Crucifixion.” Medieval Drama: An Anthology. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000, lines 66–70, 135. London, British Library, MS Additional 35290.

Wycherley, William. Hero and Leander in Burlesque. London: 1669, 57. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo credit: Francis M. Fritz, 1907. Public domain image.

rabbit test / the rabbit died

Poster for the 1978 film Rabbit Test, written and directed by Joan Rivers (subject of an early use of the phrase the rabbit died) and starring Billy Crystal. The poster has the image of a pregnant man (Crystal) with a woman (Rivers) pointing quizzically at his extended abdomen.

Poster for the 1978 film Rabbit Test, written and directed by Joan Rivers (subject of an early use of the phrase the rabbit died) and starring Billy Crystal. The poster has the image of a pregnant man (Crystal) with a woman (Rivers) pointing quizzically at his extended abdomen.

28 July 2021

You don’t hear rabbit test or the rabbit died much anymore, but if you watch old movies or television shows, you might hear the phrase the rabbit died. Simply, a rabbit test is any test that uses a rabbit as a subject animal, and more specifically it refers to a pregnancy test. The phrase the rabbit died is a slang expression meaning a positive result on a pregnancy test.

The use of rabbit test to mean a lab test using a rabbit dates to at least 1908, when it appears in and article in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in reference to a test for specific bacteria that cause putrefaction in tissue:

In ten cases where the reactions were positive, the rabbit test was made and in every instance but one (which probably failed on account of faulty manipulation) the striking phenomenon of gaseous distension of the animal was obtained.

The practice of using rabbits to test for pregnancy-related hormones in human urine was pioneered in 1931 by Maurice Friedman and Maxwell Lapham at the University of Pennsylvania. The application of rabbit test to refer specifically to a pregnancy test quickly followed. A succinct, if technical, description of the test can be found in the October 1931 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology:

In describing our results with the rabbit ovulation test for pregnancy it will not be necessary to discuss the biologic basis upon which it rests, since the reader will find the subject well covered in a recent review by Aschheim (1930) dealing with the Aschheim-Zondek test, and in another by Friedman upon the rabbit test, of which he is the original proponent. It will suffice to say that the urine of pregnant human females, after about the third week, contains large quantities of substances resembling in their effects the gonad-stimulating hormones of the anterior lobe of the hypophysis. The Aschheim-Zondek test and the rabbit ovulation test are simply two different methods for obtaining evidence as to the presence or absence of the hormones in question, in a. given sample of urine. The former is performed by giving daily injections of the urine in question to immature mice; at autopsy after five days the ovaries are examined directly for signs of stimulated growth and function. The rabbit test of Friedman depends upon the fact, that rabbits, which (unlike most other mammals) do not normally mature and rupture their graafian follicles except after copulation, may be made to ovulate without copulation by giving them an intravenous injection of the gonad-stimulating hormones as found in the hypophysis and in the pregnant urine.

The phrase the rabbit died comes along much later and is based on a misconception that if the rabbit died, the pregnancy test was positive. In reality, the rabbit died either way, because the test required a necropsy to examine the animal’s ovaries. The earliest example of the slang phrase that I have found is from a syndicated gossip column of 3 July 1967 that discusses comedian Joan Rivers’s pregnancy:

JOAN RIVERS PLANS rolling right along comically until next Christmas or so th’ the baby’s due in Feb....Joan’s whole gag-bin has shifted since the rabbit died...Says her husband Edgar was a bachelor so long, when she informed him she was expecting he took the classical bachelor-attitude and shrugged, “Don’s look at me.”

The rabbit test for pregnancy is no longer performed. Present-day pregnancy tests, such as those which can be purchased over the counter at a pharmacy, operate on the same principle, testing for certain hormones, but the test is performed without using an animal, a much more humane process.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. rabbit, n.1.

O’Brian, Jack. “Jack O’Brian’s Voice of Broadway.” Jersey Journal (Jersey City, New Jersey), 3 July 1967, 18. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008 (updated June 2021), s.v. rabbit, n.1.

Rettger, Leo F. “Further Studies of Putrefaction.” Journal of Biological Chemistry, 4.1, 1908, 54. Elsevier Science Direct.

Wilson, Karl M. and George W. Corner. “The Results of the Rabbit Ovulation Test in the Diagnosis of Pregnancy.” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 22.4, October 1931, 513. Elsevier Science Direct.

Image credit: AVCO Embassy Pictures, 1978. Fair use of a low-resolution image of a copyrighted word to illustrate the topic under discussion.

mansplaining

“Classmates,” a 2006 sculpture by Paul Tadlock on the campus of the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. A bronze sculpture of a woman sitting on a bench, a book open in her lap, staring up at a man who has one foot on the bench, his arm resting on his knee, apparently speaking to her. The statue has been nicknamed the “mansplaining statue.”

“Classmates,” a 2006 sculpture by Paul Tadlock on the campus of the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. A bronze sculpture of a woman sitting on a bench, a book open in her lap, staring up at a man who has one foot on the bench, his arm resting on his knee, apparently speaking to her. The statue has been nicknamed the “mansplaining statue.”

27 July 2021

[Update: 25 August 2025, added context for the 21 May 2008 quotation]

Mansplaining is when a man patronizingly, condescendingly, and/or needlessly expounds on a topic to a woman, regardless of her expertise or qualifications in the subject. The word is, of course, a blend of man + explain. The practice of mansplaining dates to antiquity, but the word is quite recent, with a coinage in 2008. Writer Rebecca Solnit defined the concept and its consequences in a 13 April 2008 column in the Los Angeles Times, although she did not use the word; the word would be coined in the following months:

Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.

About five weeks later, mansplaining appears on an internet discussion group. Whether there is a direct connection between the coinage and Solnit’s column, or if it was just an idea whose time had come, cannot be known. In either case, the following appeared on the Fandom_Wank discussion board in a discussion of the television series Supernatural. On 21 May 2021 a “male and fan of the show” who admittedly hadn’t yet seen the episodes in question made a couple of lengthy posts commenting on the misogyny exhibited by one of the characters on the show. To which, a user with the nom de internet phosfate posted:

Oh, gosh, thank you so much for mansplaining this to us!


On 1 August 2008 the following exchange about a performance art piece appeared on the site Livejournal.com that not only uses the word but demonstrates the misogynistic reaction that often accompanies its use:

imomus Fri, Aug. 1st, 2008 11:07 am (UTC)
Yes. “In the first section Shiomi walked up to a water tank on a table and put some crystals of copper sulfate into the water. After the copper sulfate caused an immediate chemical reaction and turned the water a vivid blue, she took the temperature of the water and announced it to the audience through a microphone. Next, while a stuffed pheasant swung from the ceiling in the dark, the four performers alternated sitting down and standing up, with flashlights directed at the vessel. In the last part, they brought chairs to the table, wrote words (specified by Shiomi) on cigarettes, and smoked them after announcing the word.”

electricwitch Fri, Aug. 1st, 2008 11:36 am (UTC)
I have to say it sounds pretty lolzy.

count_vronsky Fri, Aug. 1st, 2008 11:46 pm (UTC)
You crazy girl. It sounds amazing, and the dead pheasant is just this side of perfect. A sly take on the Last Supper (and the first supper—water into wine), or a time compression of all the suppers we will ever have. An absurdist comment on woman's maternal role as food provider, life as chemistry, and the sexual imagery of the after meal smoke.
Edited at 2008-08-01 11:47 pm (UTC)

electricwitch Fri, Aug. 1st, 2008 11:47 pm (UTC)
Wow, thank you so much for mansplaining this art to me! What with my arts degrees, I can't understand it at all!

count_vronsky Sat, Aug. 2nd, 2008 12:15 am (UTC)
“mansplaining!” lol.

count_vronsky Sat, Aug. 2nd, 2008 12:39 am (UTC)
And I am duly chastened e-witch, and grieved to have offended your petty but obviously sincere gender politics, but I meant no harm. Why is it “mansplaining” and not me just having a difference of opinion and expressing it to you? I mean does everything, even an innocuous comment—an expression of appreciation for a piece of art—have to be seen through the lens of your feminist principles? I would argue that that does as much injustice to my point of view as the perceived insult did to yours.

And this exchange appeared on Twitter on 28 April 2009:

A Lydia On Petze Street @lydia_petze · Apr 28, 2009
Replying to @renward
@renward  i don't know but this one guy with his solicitous whiny voice i wanna punch him in it arrrrrrrrrrrgh

NOT THE BEES @renward · Apr 28, 2009
@lydia_petze UGH, mansplainers are the worst. Let me speak in slow, condescending tones so the Women understand because I'm a Nice Guy.

The word quickly spread from there.

Discuss this post

Sources:

@renward, Twitter.com, 28 April 2009.

Comments on Imomus, “Fluxus on a Tourist Visa,” Livejournal.com, 1 August 2008. Archive.org.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, January 2018 (updated September 2019), s.v. mansplain, v., mansplainer, n.

phosfate, “Women Who Hate Dean Hating Women Hating... wait,” journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank, 21 May 2008. Archive.org. (Thanks to Farah F for finding and supplying me with the context and correct URL for this quotation.)

Solnit, Rebecca. “Men Who Explain Things,” Los Angeles Times, 13 April 2008.

Photo credit: Satxwdavis, date unknown, atlas obscura.com. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/classmates Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate a topic under discussion.

 

quiz

“Quiz,” an 1839 painting by Edwin Landseer. In a demonstration of differences in size, Quiz, a Maltese dog, sits on a table, its paw on the snout of a St. Bernard. Next to him are an artist’s drawing tools. A mouse is in the foreground. Quiz belonge…

“Quiz,” an 1839 painting by Edwin Landseer. In a demonstration of differences in size, Quiz, a Maltese dog, sits on a table, its paw on the snout of a St. Bernard. Next to him are an artist’s drawing tools. A mouse is in the foreground. Quiz belonged to Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent.

23 July 2021 (slightly revised 26 July 2021)

(The 26 July revision unambiguously marks the older senses of quiz as archaic, no longer in common use. It also introduces the suggestion that the sense of a test or exam is a separate, more recent coinage unrelated to the older uses and the sense meaning a bandalore.)

The origin of quiz is unknown. It arises in the late eighteenth century, and it went through a number of semantic changes before it arrived at the common meanings today of a noun meaning a test of knowledge or a verb meaning to ask questions about a topic. Given its similarity to older words like inquisitive, it may have a root in Latin, but its early uses are very much in slang and have quite different meanings, so that assumption is by no means certain.

The earliest known appearance of quiz is in a 1780 poem by Roger Wittol, An Incredible Bore. Here it means an odd or eccentric person sense that is now archaic:

T’other morning I threw off my chains with my gown,
Took a place in the Dilly and dangled to town;
(You must know ’twas a scheme, as we knowing ones say,
’Tis a BORE to be there in a d-----’d modest way)
When I found myself plac’d ’twixt a chandler’s fat wife,
And a fellow who (damme) knew nothing of life.
Me thinks ’tis a pleasantish day, says the dame,
To which I assented, the Quiz did the same:
She wish’d that these outlandish troubles would clear,
For this ’Merikin war made candles so dear.---

Our Quiz, with a head plaister’d o’er like twelfth-cake,
And a large sausage curl just above a black neck,
Had a DITTO sky-blue on, except that his breeches
Were pink, and his boot-tops were work’d with white stitches;
Notwithstanding all this I presum’d to suppose
He was going to town, to the Hummums, or Lowe’s,
Or somewhere in the Garden, where all the world goes.

Quiz quickly gave birth to the adjectives quizzical and quizzy; the latter is also now archaic. Both adjectives meant odd or peculiar and were in place by 1785.

And it appears in a 1785 pamphlet for first-year students at Cambridge University, one of the many early uses of the word coming from a school setting. The pamphlet, titled Ten Minutes Advice to Freshmen, has this to say about being teased for being a quiz, testament that schoolyard teasing and bullying hasn’t changed much over the centuries:

If you are so unfortunate as to be pronounced a Quiz, don’t be ashamed of it.—A QUIZ generally means a regular fellow, and very often a respectable man.

You see one denominated a Quiz because he hangs his gown up every night, and brushes it, and puts the tassel of his cap in a paper;—another is so called because he wears his hair, or the fashion of his buckles, different from others of his own age.—If you have reasons for these distinctions, be not afraid to own them; say boldly in the words of Horace,
            “Justum et tenacem, &c.” [just and tenacious, etc.]
If you have no reasons, you may as well conform to the general custom of people about you.

That same year, 1785, Francis Grose includes it in his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

QUIZ, a strange looking fellow, an odd dog.

Around this time, quiz could also mean a type of toy, also called a bandalore, that is an early form of what we now call a yo-yo. This sense of quiz appears in this rather misogynistic passage in the 1792 Sequel to the Adventures of Baron Munchausen:

As to the matrons, to prevent an eternal and confused prattle that would drown all manner of intelligibility, I found it absolutely necessary to sew up their mouths; so that between the blind judges and the dumb matrons, methought, the trial had a chance of being terminated sooner that it otherwise could. The matrons, instead of their tongues, had other instruments to convey their ideas: Each of them had three quizzes, on quiz pendant from the string that sewed up her mouth, and another quiz in either hand. When she wished to express her negative, she darted and recoiled the quizzes in her right and left hand; and when she desired to express her affirmative, she, nodding, made the quiz pendant flow down and recoil again.

The toy probably got this name from being a novelty, an oddity. It is not a great leap from being considered odd to being mocked, and by 1787 the verb to quiz, meaning to mock, appears. From the humor periodical The Microcosm of 4 June 1787:

Riding through Eton about a week ago with my nose before me,
Nescio quid meditans, nugarum, et totus in illis.
[Musing on some trifle or other, and totally intent on it; Horace, Satires 1.9]

Meditating, indeed, on I know not what, I was awakened from my reverie by several provincial words, the meaning of which were to me, at that time, almost unintelligible; although by the gestures which accompanied them, it was no difficult matter to discover that were not intended by way of compliment, “There’s a quiz! there’s a good one! my God! what a Gig! what a tough one! Smoke his nose!”

Notwithstanding I perceived that these expressions proceeded from several young Etonians, not one of whom had arrived at the age of thirteen, my indignation was foolishly roused. I long’d for the trumpeter’s sord, and, in the first ebullitions of rage, idly made use of some very hasty expressions. I was lucky for both parties, but especially for myself, that I had nothing in my hand but a small flexible switch. However, my anger was momentary; I soon collected all my lost philosophy, repeating those lines of Horace, to which theorists often have recourse.

———————animum rege! qui nisi paret
Imperat: hunc frænis, hunc tu compesce catenâ
[Rule your passion! For unless it obeys, it commands; restrain it with a bridle, restrain it with fetters; Horace, Epistles 1.2]

But it was too late, I had provoked the boys to resentment. Several now ran to the head of my beast,

———————Nec Saxa, nec ullum
Telorum interca cessat genus.
[Nor meanwhile do stones nor any kind of missiles cease; Virgil, Aeneid, Book 2)

Many pieces of mud and some stones were thrown, notwithstanding I advanced safe under cover my nose, still quizzed, and still pelted, till my quadruped arrived opposite the schoolgate.

And quiz would come to mean ridicule or mockery. From a 1795 poem Soliloquy on the Powder Tax, a parody of Hamlet’s famed soliloquy:

To pay, or not to pay? That is the question.—
Whether its better in the mind to suffer
The laughs and quizzes of the powder’d pates;
Or to take arms against so many troubles,
And by a guinea end them?

Around the same time, quiz came to mean to spy upon or watch closely, as one might stare at an odd person or thing. From Miles Peter Andrews’s 1795 play The Mysteries of the Castle:

Long has been serv’d from this our motley Stage,
Repasts for various tastes—from youth to age—
To lively Miss, escap’d from Sſhool and toil,
Our sports have oft bestow’d the infant smile,
While the rude boy, from Westminster or Eton,
Who “spies,” and “quizzes” one, where’er they meet one.

(The use of a medial or long S in Sſhool as a replacement for a < c > or as part of an initial double < s > is odd to my eyes—but I’m not an expert in eighteenth-century typographical practices. In my quotations, including the other examples in this quotation, I have replaced medial esses with the modern, round form, but I leave it as is in this word.)

This sense of watching closely or peering intently may serve as a transition to the present-day sense of quiz meaning a test in school The test sense of quiz arose in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. But this test sense could also be an independent coinage based on the Latin root at the heart of words like inquisitive. The verb to quiz, meaning to question or test, especially in the context of a school, appears in Harper’s of June 1866:

Professor H——, of the Iowa Medical College, is an inveterate joker, as his friends know to their grief. His best joking field is among the students, who semi-annually throng his school for instruction in the healing art. But once upon a time an ex-military student of his classes flanked and vanquished him by one of those deceptive movements known generically as “strategy.” Professor H—— was lecturing his class upon the diseases of the cranium generally, and accidents to that locality specially; and, to conclude, quizzed them thoroughly on the difference between fracture of the skull and concussion of the brain, and was pleased to see that all understood it, but was annoyed and pained to find that the military man couldn’t see it.

[...]

On this occasion, when he found the young man still ignorant of the subject, he patiently went through a long and tedious explanation, in the most commonplace terms, and then asked, [...] “Now what would you do first if you had a fracture of the skull?

“I think I would send for a doctor?”

Such a shout as greeted the disgusted Professor at this reply would have broken up a Western camp meeting. There was no more lecturing that day.

And the next year William James uses the noun quiz, meaning such a text or exam, in an 1867 letter that also demonstrates that precarious career prospects of academics are nothing new:

At present my health is so uncertain that I cannot look forward to teaching physiology. As a central point of study I imagine that the border ground of physiology and psychology, overlapping both, would be as fruitful as any, and I am now working on to it. But a cultivator thereof can make no money. Occasional review articles, etc., perhaps giving “quizzes” in anatomy and physiology, and getting work to do for medical periodicals, may help along. If I wrote with more facility I fancy the latter might be productive. My ambition is modest, as you see, but my wants will not be numerous.

In addition to the supposed Latin etymology, there is another, almost certainly specious, origin story for quiz. The following appeared in an 1836 pronouncing dictionary, titled Walker Remodelled, and has been repeated many times since:

All these words, which occur only in vulgar or colloquial use, and which Webster traces to learned roots, originated as a joke: Daly, the manager of a Dublin play-house, wagered that a word of no meaning should be the common talk and puzzle of the city in twenty-four hours; in the course of that time the letters Q,u,i,z were chalked or pasted on all the walls of Dublin with an effect that won the wager.

Richard Daly was an Irish actor and theater manager, and in 1779-80 he returned to Dublin from London and purchased the Smock Alley Theatre. So, the chronology works for this explanation, but there is little else to recommend its veracity. The early citations of quiz are not associated with Ireland.

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Sources:

Andrews, Miles Peter. The Mysteries of the Castle. London: T.N. Longman, 1795, 3. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

“Editor’s Drawer.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1866, 134–35. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. quiz, n., quiz, v.

Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London: S. Hooper, 1785, s.v. quiz. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

James, William. Letter (26 December 1867). Ralph Barton Perry. The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1 of 2. Boston: Little Brown, 1935, 254. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Microcosm, no. 29, 4 June 1787, 336–38. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, modified, December 2020, s.v. quiz, n., quiz, v.1, quizzical, adj.; June 2008, modified June 2018, s.v., quizzy, adj.1.

A Sequel to the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. London: H.D. Symonds and J. Owen, 1792, 177–79. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Smart, B.H. Walker Remodelled: A New Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language, London: T. Cadell, 1836, s.v. Quizzing, s. and a.

“Soliloquy on the Powder Tax” (August 1795). The Kentish Register, and Monthly Miscellany, vol. 3. Canterbury: Simmons and Kirkby, 1795, 310. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Ten Minutes Advice to Freshmen. Cambridge: J. Archdeacon, 1785, 31–32. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Tréguer, Pascal. “Origin of ‘Quiz’ (‘Vir Bonus Est Quis?’)?” Wordhistories.net, 12 May 2017.

Wittol, Roger. An Incredible Bore: A Familiar Epistle. London: G. Kearsly, 1780, 13–14. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Image credit: Edwin Henry Landseer, “Quiz,” 1839, oil on canvas, Royal Collection. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a work created before 1927.