A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which the players (as individuals or in teams) attempt to answer questions correctly. Quizzes are also brief assessments 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, a common accoutrement of British Regency dandies. 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 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. 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 quizzes
• Team Quizbowls
• in India:
• see Quizzing in India, for a discussion on the specific evolution of the quizzing culture in India
• in Lithuania:
• Protmušis
• in Australia:
• Music for the Masses (quiz night)
• in Canada:
• Reach for the Top
• in the United States:
• College Bowl
• National Academic Quiz Tournaments
• Academic Competition Federation
• in the United Kingdom:
• University Challenge (televised)
• Schools' Challenge
• Individual Quiz Tournaments
• in multiple countries:
• World Quizzing Championships
• in the United Kingdom:
• Mastermind (televised)
• Bait Bazi poetic quiz in Pakistan
• Board games:
• Trivial Pursuit
• TV quizzes, also called quiz shows (Game shows TV/Radio)
• Quiz Call phone-in television show
• Jeopardy!
• Who Wants to be a Millionaire
• The Weakest Link
• BBC's MasterMind
• Bait Bazi poetic quiz
• Online Quizzes
• Blog Quizzes