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Quiz



 
 
A quiz is a form of game
Game

A game is a structured wiktionary:activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from Manual labour, which is usually carried out for wiktionary:remuneration, and from art, which is more concerned with the expression of ideas....
 or mind sport in which the players (as individuals or in teams) attempt to answer questions correctly. Quizzes are also brief assessment
Assessment

Educational assessment is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community , the institution, or the educational system as a whole....
s used in education and similar fields to measure growth in knowledge, abilities, and/or skills.

Quizzes are usually scored in points and many quizzes are designed to determine a winner from a group of participants - usually the participant with the highest score.

first appearance of the word is from 1784 and means an odd person.






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A quiz is a form of game
Game

A game is a structured wiktionary:activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from Manual labour, which is usually carried out for wiktionary:remuneration, and from art, which is more concerned with the expression of ideas....
 or mind sport in which the players (as individuals or in teams) attempt to answer questions correctly. Quizzes are also brief assessment
Assessment

Educational assessment is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community , the institution, or the educational system as a whole....
s used in education and similar fields to measure growth in knowledge, abilities, and/or skills.

Quizzes are usually scored in points and many quizzes are designed to determine a winner from a group of participants - usually the participant with the highest score.

Etymology

The first appearance of the word is from 1784 and means an odd person. This sense survives today in the word "quizzical". It was also used in the term quizzing glass
Monocle

A monocle is a type of corrective lens used to correct the visual perception in only one eye. It consists of a circular Lens , generally with a wire ring around the circumference that can be attached to a string....
, a common accoutrement of British Regency dandies
Dandy

A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies. Historically, especially in late 18th- and early 19th-century United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, a dandy, who was self-made, often strove to imitate an aristocratic style of life despite coming from a middle-class...
. It later acquired a meaning of to make fun of, or to mock. How it acquired its current meaning of a test is unknown, but that sense did not appear until 1867 and then it was in the United States.

The OED2 has a citation from 1847 where the word appears: "She com back and quiesed us", which could be a clue to its origin. Quiz as a test could be a corruption of the Latin Qui es, meaning "Who are you?" American Heritage
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is an American English dictionary of the English language published by Boston, Massachusetts publisher Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969....
 says it may be from the English dialect verb quiset, meaning to question. In any case it is probably from the same root as question and inquisitive.

There is a well-known but untrue story of the word "quiz", which says that in 1791 a Dublin theater owner named James Daly made a bet that he could introduce a word into the language within twenty-four hours. He then went out and hired a group of street urchins to write the word "quiz", which was a nonsense word, on walls around the city of Dublin
Dublin

Dublin is both the largest city and capital of Republic of Ireland. It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region....
. Within a day, the word was common currency and had acquired a meaning (since no one knew what it meant, everyone thought it was some sort of test) and Daly had some extra cash in his pocket. However, there is no evidence to support the story, and the term was already in use before the alleged bet in 1791.

As competitions

Quizzes may be held on a variety of subjects (general knowledge, 'pot luck') or subject-specific. The format of the quiz can also vary widely. Popularly known competition quizzes include
  • Pub quiz
    Pub quiz

    A pub quiz is a quiz held in a public house. It is a largely United Kingdom phenomenon, which reached its peak in the early 1990s. These spread to other Commonwealth of Nations countries such as Australia and New Zealand, and also to the United States....
    zes
  • Team Quizbowl
    Quizbowl

    Quizbowl is a family of games of questions and answers on all topics of human knowledge, commonly played in high school and college. The game is played with a lockout buzzer system between some number of teams, most commonly two teams of four or five players each....
    s
  • in India
    India

    India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
    :
    • see Quizzing in India
      Quizzing in India

      Quizzing in India is quite popular, and has developed its own, unique flavour. Quizzing in India is different from American and British quizzing in that it is diverse, with different genres catering to different geographical regions, age groups, interests, etc....
      , for a discussion on the specific evolution of the quizzing culture in India
      India

      India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
  • in Lithuania
    Lithuania

    Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest....
    :
    • Protmušis
      Protmušis

      Protmu?is is a team quiz-type game that takes place in Vilnius, Lithuania. The organisers and participants of Protmu?is are mainly students of various universities of Vilnius....
  • in Australia
    Australia

    Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
    :
    • Music for the Masses (quiz night)
      Music for the Masses (quiz night)

      Music for the Mission is a quiz night held annually in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. In 2007 it attracted 1,324 participants, making it at that time the largest single-venue quiz or trivia night ever held, according to Guinness World Records ....
  • in Canada
    Canada

    Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
    :
    • Reach for the Top
      Reach for the Top

      Reach for the Top is a Canada game show in which teams of high school students participate in local, provincial and eventually national trivia tournaments....
  • in the United States
    United States

    The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
    :
    • College Bowl
      College Bowl

      College Bowl was a format of college-level quizbowl run and operated by College Bowl Company, Incorporated. It had a format similar to the current NAQT format....
    • National Academic Quiz Tournaments
      National Academic Quiz Tournaments

      National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC is a question-writing and quizbowl organizing company founded by former players in 1996. It is unique among U.S....
    • Academic Competition Federation
      Academic Competition Federation

      ACF is one of the major formats of collegiate quizbowl. The name refers to two related things:*The actual organization, founded as the Academic Competition Foundation in 1991, which changed its name to the Academic Competition Federation in 1997 and presently continues to run a national championship for collegiate quizbowl as well as...
  • in the United Kingdom
    United Kingdom

    The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
    :
    • University Challenge
      University Challenge

      University Challenge is a United Kingdom game show that has aired since 1962. The format is based on the United States show College Bowl, which ran on NBC radio from 1953 to 1957, and on NBC TV from 1959 to 1970....
       (televised)
    • Schools' Challenge
      Schools' Challenge

      Schools' Challenge is the national general knowledge competition for schools in the United Kingdom. It uses the same basic rules as University Challenge, although it is affiliated with neither the game nor the television show....
  • Individual Quiz Tournaments
    • in multiple countries:
      • World Quizzing Championships
    • in the United Kingdom:
      • Mastermind
        Mastermind (TV series)

        Mastermind is a United Kingdom game show, well-known for its challenging questions, intimidating setting and air of seriousness.Devised by Bill Wright, the basic format of Mastermind has never changed — four contestants face two rounds, one on a specialised subject of the contestant's choice, the other a general knowledge roun...
         (televised)
    • Bait Bazi
      Bait Bazi

      Bait Bazi is a verbal game and a genre of Urdu poetry played by composing verses of Urdu poems. The game is common among Urdu speakers in Pakistan and India....
       poetic quiz in Pakistan
      Pakistan

      Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located in South Asia and borders Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046 kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and People's Republic of China in th...
  • Board games:
    • Trivial Pursuit
      Trivial Pursuit

      Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which progress is determined by a player's ability to answer trivia and popular culture questions. The game was created in 1979 by Scott Abbott, a sports editor for The Canadian Press, and Chris Haney , a photo editor for Montreal's The Gazette ....
    • Bezzerwizzer
      Bezzerwizzer

      Bezzerwizzer is a trivia game combining trivia and tactics. The game was invented in 2006 by the Dane Jesper B?low.In the UK the American company Mattel markets Bezzerwizzer....
  • TV quizzes, also called quiz shows (Game show
    Game show

    A game show is a type of television program in which members of the public or celebrity, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving problems for money and/or prizes....
    s TV
    Television

    Television is a widely used telecommunication mass-media for transmitting and receiving moving , either monochrome or color, usually accompanied by sound....
    /Radio
    Radio

    Radio is the transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic radiation with frequency below those of visible light.Electromagnetic radiation radio propagation by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space....
    )
    • Quiz Call
      Quiz Call

      Quiz Call is a late night/early morning phone-in quiz TV show, produced by Ostrich Media for Five , Five US and Fiver_%28channel%29.It is broadcast live every Thursday, Friday and Saturday from around midnight through to 4.00am....
       phone-in television show
    • Jeopardy!
      Jeopardy!

      Jeopardy! is a game show featuring trivia in topics such as history, literature, pop culture and science. The show has a decades-long Jeopardy! broadcast history in the United States since its creation by Merv Griffin in the early 1960s....
    • Who Wants to be a Millionaire
    • The Weakest Link
      The Weakest Link

      The Weakest Link is a popular television quiz show which first appeared in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 14 August 2000. The original British version of the show airs around the world on BBC Entertainment and used to air on BBC America....
    • BBC's MasterMind
    • Bait Bazi
      Bait Bazi

      Bait Bazi is a verbal game and a genre of Urdu poetry played by composing verses of Urdu poems. The game is common among Urdu speakers in Pakistan and India....
       poetic quiz
  • Online Quizzes
    • Blog Quizzes
See also:
  • Quiz league
    Quiz league

    A quiz league is an organisation running quizzes on a home and away basis, usually in pubs. Like the pub quiz, it is chiefly a United Kingdom phenomenon although the format has significant differences to a pub quiz due to the usual number of teams and the presence of individual questions....
  • Quiz machine
    Quiz machine

    Quiz Machine is a term used in the UK for commercial coin operated video quiz games that offer cash prizes for winning performances. These machines are usually found sited in pubs, bars and other places of entertainment....
  • Bamboozle
    Bamboozle

    Bamboozle is a quiz game featured on Channel 4 Teletext in the United Kingdom. It was originally part of Teletext's "Fun & Games" category, but the rest of the category has been discontinued for some years....
    , a teletext
    Teletext

    Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules....
     quiz on UK TV
    Television

    Television is a widely used telecommunication mass-media for transmitting and receiving moving , either monochrome or color, usually accompanied by sound....


In education

A quiz is usually a form of a student assessment, but often has fewer questions of lesser difficulty and requires less time for completion than a test
Test (student assessment)

A test or an examination is an assessment, often administered on paper or on the Computer-adaptive testing, intended to measure the test-takers' or respondents' knowledge, skills, aptitudes, or classification in many other topics ....
. This use is typically found in the USA and Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
.

Other quizzes

Additionally, a personality quiz
Personality quiz

A personality quiz is a series of questions that intends to reveal something about the person who answers them. The personality quiz, unlike a knowledge quiz, has no definite set of right or wrong answers....
 may be a series of multiple-choice questions about the respondent without right or wrong answers. The responses to these questions are tallied according to a key, and the result purports to reveal some quality of the respondent. This kind of "quiz" was originally popularized by women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan (magazine)

Cosmopolitan, also known as the Cosmo, is the best-selling young women's magazine in the world. The content includes articles on relationships and sex, health, careers, self-improvement, celebrities, as well as fashion and beauty ....
. They have since become common on the internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
, where the result page typically includes code which can be added to a blog
Blog

A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video....
 entry to publicize the result. These postings are common on LiveJournal
LiveJournal

LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free software and open source software Server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
.

There are also many online quizzes
Online quizzes

Online quizzes are quizzes that are published on the Internet and are generally for entertainment purposes....
, many webmasters have quiz sections on their websites and forums, phpBB2 has one MOD (modification) which allows users to submit quizzes, this is the

Most of the online quizzes
Online quizzes

Online quizzes are quizzes that are published on the Internet and are generally for entertainment purposes....
 are to be taken lightly. The results do not often reflect the true personality or relationship. They are also rarely psychometric
Psychometrics

Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of educational and psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and Wiktionary:personality traits....
ally valid
Validity (statistics)

In psychology, validity has two distinct fields of application. The first involves test validity, a concept that has evolved with the field of psychometrics: "Validity refers to the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of tests"....
. However, they may occasion reflection on the subject of the quiz and provide a springboard for a person to explore his or her emotions, beliefs, or actions.

See also

  • Test
    Test (student assessment)

    A test or an examination is an assessment, often administered on paper or on the Computer-adaptive testing, intended to measure the test-takers' or respondents' knowledge, skills, aptitudes, or classification in many other topics ....