Shared quiz
The Words We Borrowed
Ten everyday English words that arrived from somewhere else entirely, and what they meant before they got here.
- Questions
- 10
- Time to play
- about 6 min
- Category
- General knowledge
- Language
- English
- language
- english
- etymology
- words
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The questions
Correct answers are shown below, so you can check the quiz before you use it.
Which language gave English the word "ketchup"?
- Hokkien Chinese, possibly via Malaycorrect
- Aztec Nahuatl
- Portuguese
- Arabic
Why
Ketchup is traced to a Southern Min (Hokkien) term for fish sauce, borrowed into English either directly or through Malay kecap. Tomato ketchup developed later.
20 seconds to answer
The word "shampoo" came into English from Hindi.
- Truecorrect
- False
Why
Shampoo comes from Hindi chāmpo, an instruction to press or massage. Recorded in English in 1762, it originally referred to massaging the body; the meaning of washing the hair developed later.
15 seconds to answer
Which Japanese word, literally "harbour wave", is now the English term for a wave caused by an earthquake?
Accepted answers
tsunami
Why
In Japanese, tsu means harbour and nami means wave. The name reflects how these waves often go unnoticed at sea and only become devastating near the coast.
30 seconds to answer
Order these by how long they have been in English, earliest first.
Correct order
- wine
- sofa
- robot
- emoji
Why
"Wine" was already in Old English, from Latin vinum. "Sofa" arrived in the 1600s, "robot" in the 1920s, and "emoji", from Japanese, spread in English in the 2010s.
45 seconds to answer
"Robot" was coined for a play in 1920. What does its Czech root mean?
- Forced labourcorrect
- Iron man
- Servant of the house
- Thinking machine
Why
Czech robota means forced labour or drudgery. Karel Čapek used "robot" for the artificial workers in his play R.U.R., and credited his brother Josef with the word.
20 seconds to answer
The word "algebra" comes from Arabic.
- Truecorrect
- False
Why
"Algebra" comes from al-jabr, "restoring", in the title of a treatise by the Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, written in Baghdad around 820.
15 seconds to answer
Which of these do you use most often without ever thinking about where it came from?
Poll — no right answer, players just vote.
- Café
- Karaoke
- Safari
- Bungalow
20 seconds to answer
"Safari" entered English from which language?
- Swahilicorrect
- Afrikaans
- Hindi
- Zulu
Why
In Swahili, safari means a journey. Swahili itself took the word from Arabic safar, travel.
20 seconds to answer
Which Norwegian word for a deep glacial inlet is now plain English?
Accepted answers
fjord
Why
A fjord is a long, narrow sea inlet carved by a glacier and later flooded by the sea. English took the word directly from Norwegian.
30 seconds to answer
A "bungalow" is named after a house style from which region?
- Bengalcorrect
- Burma
- Borneo
- Bavaria
Why
"Bungalow" comes from the Hindi and Gujarati word for "of Bengal", describing a single-storey house with a veranda built in that region.
20 seconds to answer