QUIZ: Answers

1D

The term catfish first made a splash as the title of a 2010 documentary film about online deceivers. It’s a reference to how fishers use catfish to keep cod active during transport.

2C

YOLO is an abbreviation for “You Only Live Once” and is often used as justification for reckless behavior.

3B

Appearing early in the 20th century, wisenheimer combines wise with -enheimer, a reference to smart-sounding German family names.

4D

Thanks in part to its use in the 1983 hit song “Valley Girl” by Frank Zappa and his 14-year-old daughter, Moon Unit, the word grody became a hallmark of the 1980s mall scene. However, the word had been seen in use almost two decades before.

5A

Side-eye has been in the public eye plenty since it gained popularity about 2010, but it had been sighted before: James Joyce used the phrase in his 1922 novel Ulysses, and the phrase had even been mentioned in 1797.

6B

The phrase the bee’s knees was just one of many nonsense animal possessives that were so pervasive during the 1920s. Others included the cat’s meow, the ant’s pants, and the eel’s ankle.

7B

Although salty has enjoyed a linguistic resurgence, this usage was first recorded in African American newspapers in the 1930s.

8B

Star of classic films such as Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart would often keep a cigarette dangling between his lips until the cigarette was almost gone. Bogarting became slang for consuming something without sharing, thanks to this usage in the 1969 film Easy Rider.

9B

Bougie is a shortening of bourgeois.

10 A

Borrowing a term from animal feet, hoofer first appeared well over a hundred years ago but is still being used today to describe professional dancers.

11 D

In addition to describing rug rats, ankle biter is sometimes used to mean an aggressive small dog.

12 B

Sawbones first saw print in Charles Dickens’s 1837 novel The Pickwick Papers, back when one of a doctor's primary duties was amputation.