quiz, you

   ‘Oh, you quiz - I know what you are going to say,’ says Miss Wardle to Mr Tracy Tupman, in The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens. The same speaker has a moment before called Mr Tupman ‘you naughty man’; ‘you quiz’ could be roughly translated in this context as ‘you who are quizzing me, making fun of me’.

   In an age of television quiz games it is difficult to remember that the earliest meaning of ‘quiz’, when the word appeared at the end of the eighteenth century, was an odd or eccentric person. It had a variant form ‘quoz’. The origins of both forms are a mystery, though a connection with ‘queer’ has been suggested.

   Since ‘quixotic’ roughly fits the original meaning of ‘quiz’, in that quixotism is a type of eccentricity, that word may also have played its part. The sense development of ‘quiz’ into a verb meaning to question someone may have come about by association of the word with other words such as ‘question’ and ‘inquisitive’.

   A modern quiz is certainly a kind of inquisition, albeit an enjoyable one. This modern meaning of ‘quiz’ has of course caused the former meanings, including that which Miss Wardle had in mind, to become obsolete.