Origins of Phrases Trivia

1. When people say ""Money is the root of all evil," they think they are quoting from the Bible. However, that quote is inaccurate. What does the Bible actually say about money and evil?

From Quiz Don't Quote That - Quote This Instead!

Answer: "For the love of money is the root of all evil."

1 Timothy 6:10 of the King James Bible states that "For the love of money is the root of all evil." The simplified quote "Money is the root of all evil" has become a well known saying. Although the true authorship of the first Book of Timothy is unknown, it is typically credited to Paul the Apostle, one of the most important and influential followers of Jesus. To the writer of 1 Timothy, the love of money is a sin, and he is warning against it as nothing good will come from it.

From Quiz People Who Became Household Words

Answer: Homer

Matt's mother's name is Marge, and his sisters are Lisa and Maggie. The remaining family member of "The Simpsons" is Bart, an anagram of 'brat'.

From Quiz Classical MISquotes

Answer: Waynee, Weedee, Weekee

The confusion comes from the fact that Latin pronunciation changed over time. In Caesar's day, V's were pronounced like W's, and C's were always pronounced hard, like K's. Later on, in Church Latin, V's were pronounced like our V's and C's were pronounced like CH's. Both are acceptable pronunciations for Latin as long as you understand the time frames involved. But as for the answer to this question, as one author put it, it should sound like Caesar conquered Hawaii!

From Quiz Origins Of Famous Phrases

Answer: Alice in "Through The Looking Glass"

The line is a quote from a dialogue between the Red Queen and Alice. To this rule Alice objects that it MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day". "No, it can't", said the Queen. "It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any OTHER day, you know."

From Quiz Famous Quotations From Famous People

Answer: Margaret Thatcher

Some kind of 'Royal Plural'.

From Quiz First Heard Where?

Answer: Battle of Copenhagen

During the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, Nelson's ships were coming under heavy fire from the large Danish and Norwegian fleet, prompting Admiral Sir Hyde Parker to signal for Nelson to retreat. When informed of the signal by his lieutenant, Nelson allegedly responded by raising his telescope to his injured eye and proclaiming, "I really do not see the signal." The battle lasted for over three hours with much damage on both sides, until Nelson sent word to Crown Prince Frederick, the Danish commander, requesting a truce, which the Prince accepted. Following negotiations between the two, an armistice was declared and Nelson became commander-in-chief in the Baltic Sea.

From Quiz More Interesting Word Origins

Answer: With prospectors, during the California Gold Rush

It was during the Gold Rush of the 1840s and 1850s that Levi delivered the goods.

From Quiz Familiar Quotations

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln spoke these words at the start of his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. Lincoln was instrumental in passing the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery. The U.S was mired in the Civil War, and Lincoln led the charge to pass the 13th Amendment, which hastened the end of the war.

From Quiz Don't Quote That - Quote This Instead!

Answer: "The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place."

In an interview with a journalist from the New York Journal-American on July 6th, 1946, Leo Durocher answered a question by saying "The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place." This was in reference to the New York Giants baseball team, the team that were bitter rivals of Durocher's team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. At the time of the interview, the Giants were sitting in seventh position on the MLB National League points ladder - seventh place being second from last on the ladder. Over time, the quote became altered to "Nice guys finish last," and has since entered everyday usage in the altered, and incorrect, form.

From Quiz To Kill the Truth

Answer: What is truth?

The passage is from the Gospel of John 18:38. It has been called "Jesting Pilate" after statesman-philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) opened his essay "Of Truth" (1625) with: "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." In this essay, Bacon argues that people are inherently inclined to lie, possessing "a natural though corrupt love, of the lie itself." It has long been debated whether Pilate meant that truth was irrelevant or that it was hard to ascertain. A common interpretation is that the Governor of Judea found no fault with his prisoner but ducked his responsibilities to appease the mob, and (pusillanimously) fled before he could hear a reply, as Bacon suggests. In the original Greek of St. John's Gospel, the word translated as "truth" in English or "veritas" in Latin is "altheia", which can mean more specifically "unclosed-ness" or "disclosure". It was a term used in Ancient Greek philosophy and revived by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Aldous Huxley used "Jesting Pilate" as the title of his 1926 book about his journeys through several countries.

From Quiz Classical MISquotes

Answer: Greek

The Latin "Et tu, Brute?" translates as "Even you, Brutus?" But, according to the historian Suetonius, Caesar spoke his dying words in Greek: "kai su, teknon?" It means, "Even you, child?" Another source has "kai su ei ekeinon, o pai?" or "Even you are one of them, child?" Neither one is quite a direct translation of "Et tu, Brute"! I suspect our phrase comes from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, where Caesar's dying words are, indeed, "Et tu, Brute."

From Quiz Origins Of Famous Phrases

Answer: William Congreve

Congreve lived from 1670 till 1729. The exact quote is: " Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

From Quiz Famous Quotations From Famous People

Answer: Margaret Thatcher

Same lady , same spirit.

From Quiz First Heard Where?

Answer: Scotland

15th century Scottish law stated that "If he be not taken red-hand the sheriff cannot proceed against him." as the evidence of blood on one's hands provided the most compelling proof of such a crime and the earliest known example of the phrase is found in the Scottish Acts of Parliament of James I (1432). Interestingly, there is a legend, but no proof, that the phrase originated in the northern Irish province of Ulster. Myth tells of a boat race in which the first to touch the shore was to become the province's ruler, and an ingenious competitor guaranteed his win by cutting off his hand as the shoreline approached and throwing it to the shore ahead of his rivals. This is the reason for the red hand on the official flag of Ulster.

From Quiz Familiar Quotations

Answer: Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali finished his career with 56 wins and only 5 losses, 37 of those 56 wins were by knockout. In 1959 and 1960, Ali won gold at the U.S. National Championships. He also won a gold medal in Rome in the 1960 Olympic Games as a light-heavyweight. Ali passed away in 2016 from Parkinson's Disease.

From Quiz To Kill the Truth

Answer: Kellyanne Conway

Political consultant and pollster Kellyanne Conway (b. 1967) was Donald Trump's presidential campaign manager in 2016. She served as Senior Counselor to the President from 2017 until her resignation in August 2020. On the NBC program 'Meet the Press', host Chuck Todd asked Kellyanne Conway about White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's exaggeration of the size of the crowd at Donald Trump's inauguration as President of the USA. Todd asked Conway why Spicer would "utter a provable falsehood" Conway responded that Spicer was giving "alternative facts". After a great deal of negative response from the press and social media, a Breitbart news article claimed "alternative facts" was a legal term, but no other news outlet could find the term in a legal dictionary. Said director Steven Spielberg at the National Board of Review awards for his film 'The Post' (2017), "We are in a fight and it's a fight not just about alternative facts but it's a fight for the objective truth". In Germany, "alternative facts" (Alternative Fakten) was declared the Un-Word of the Year (Unwort des Jahres), a dubious honor shared with such pearls as lying press (lügenpresse, a favorite of Hitler's), collateral damage, and ethnic cleansing.

From Quiz People Who Became Household Words

Answer: Kinko

The young man with the wild, kinky red hair opened his first photocopy shop in 1970 near the University of California at Santa Barbara.

From Quiz Famous Sermons

Answer: Jesus Christ

This quote may be found in the New Testament Gospels.

From Quiz Origins Of Famous Phrases

Answer: Jean Harlow

Jean Harlow's film "Bombshell" dates back to 1933. She was born as Harlean Carpenter and lived from 1911 to 1937. David Stenn wrote a biography about her: "Bombshell. The Life and Death of Jean Harlow." Jayne Mansfield was born on April 19, 1933 and died in a car-crash on June 29, 1967. Marilyn Monroe was born on 1st of June 1926, in L.A. and died on 15 August, 1962, in Brentwood, CA. Brigitte Bardot was born on 28 September, 1934 in Paris. A typical quote from Jean Harlow herself: "I like to wake up every morning feeling a new man. "

From Quiz Famous Quotations From Famous People

Answer: Mae West

In the early 1940s the RAF named an inflatable life jacket after this celebrity. Equally famous is her remark 'It's not the men in my life that counts - it's the life in my men. '

From Quiz First Heard Where?

Answer: Advancement of Learning by Sir Francis Bacon

In Bacon's "Advancement of Learning" (1605), he wrote "Cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves." The phrase as we know it today was a favourite of Methodist preacher, John Wesley, who circa 1791 gave a sermon in which he stated, "Let it be observed, that slovenliness is no part of religion; that neither this, nor any text of Scripture, condemns neatness of apparel. Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. "Cleanliness is, indeed, next to godliness." The phrase covers much more than personal hygiene, with cleanliness referring to ones moral purity just as as much as ones ablution habits.

From Quiz Familiar Quotations

Answer: Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. said this in a speech in Detroit in 1963. He is considered to be the most influential civil rights activist of all time. King was known for being peaceful in his speeches and gatherings, no matter the cost. His most famous speech is his "I Have a Dream" speech given during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.

From Quiz To Kill the Truth

Answer: Stephen Colbert

"Truthiness" in this case means the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true. Stephen Colbert, in his faux-pundit persona, used it as "Tonight's Word" on his TV program, "The Colbert Report" in 2005. Colbert described how he arrived at the concept: "Truthiness is a word I pulled right out of my keister". Yet, the word already existed in the OED and other dictionaries of the English language. In the 19th century, truthiness was a synonym, without irony though with some levity, for "truthfulness"; and "truthy" meant "faithful" or "true". Computer programmers started using "truthy" in the 20th century to mean something else. In Boolean logic, an expression can evaluate to TRUE or FALSE, or more precisely, to 1 or 0, turning a relay or transistor ON or OFF. A "truthy" expression evaluates to 1, and a "falsy" expression evaluates to 0. Be that as it may, in 2006 'Merriam-Webster Dictionary' named "truthiness" its Word of the Year, as did the American Dialect Society the year before. The 'New Oxford American Dictionary' added the new "truthiness" sense to its entries, and credited Colbert with its origin.

From Quiz You Haven't Got a Prayer

Answer: Pink Floyd

Roger Waters produced the initial designs for the original pig, "Algie", forty feet of helium-filled porcine, which was flown over Battersea Power Station for the iconic album cover shot. The pig broke free due to a strong gust of wind and was spotted by airline pilots at high altitude over South East England, leading to flight cancellations at Heathrow.

From Quiz Famous Sermons

Answer: St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis believed in witnessing even to the animals.

From Quiz Origins Of Famous Phrases

Answer: Churchill about the actions to be expected of the Soviet Union during World War II

Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, Nov. 30, 1874. He died on Jan. 24, 1965. Some of his speeches are part of the history of World War II. De Gaulle was another great speechmaker. Born at Lille on Nov.22, 1890; died on Nov.9, 1970, at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises. Even his very name seems to make him into a symbol of France, Gaulle referring to Gallia (= France). Ironically enough such a name also points to his ancestors having left the Gaulish area and having settled elsewhere. Possibly his ancestors came from Gaul and immigrated into the County of Flanders, which was bilingual "in olden times". Lord Kitchener of Khartoum (born in 1850) was Secretary of War when, on Sunday May 7, 1916, his ship the armoured cruiser Hampshire was sunk west of the Orkneys. Famous because of the "Your Country Needs You"- poster. Orson Welles was born on March 6, 1915, at Kenosha, Wisconsin. He died of a heart-attack on Oct. 10, 1985.

From Quiz Famous Quotations From Famous People

Answer: Woodrow Wilson

Or how U.S.A. 's policies developed from 1915 to 1917. - Other quotation from same source :'Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.'

From Quiz First Heard Where?

Answer: US presidential elections of 1840

The elections of 1840 pitted incumbent President, Martin Van Buren against the Whig pairing of General William Harrison and John Tyler. Harrison, who had fought against Tecumseh's confederacy at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, earned the nickname "Old Tippecanoe" from this battle, and this was used in what many consider to be the first campaign slogan of 'Tippecanoe and Tyler, too'. As part of his campaign, he also used Victory Balls, which were not dances as one would expect, but ten-foot diameter globes made of tin and leather, which were pushed from one campaign rally to the next. His supporters were encouraged to attend rallies and to push the ball on to the next town, chanting 'keep the ball rolling'. Harrison won the presidential election and was inaugurated on March 4, 1841, but died on April 4 the same year, making him president for just 31 days as well, as being the first US president to die in office.

From Quiz More Interesting Word Origins

Answer: Richard Brinsley Sheridan

From one of his plays, 'The Rivals'.

From Quiz Familiar Quotations

Answer: Neil Armstrong & Armstrong

Neil Armstrong relayed this message to the team in Houston upon reaching the moon on July 20, 1969. After landing in the Sea of Tranquility and relaying this message, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin began preparations to actually set foot on the moon for the first time. Over six hours after the "Eagle" capsule landed on the moon, Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface. Armstrong and Aldrin spent over two hours exploring the surface, including planting a U.S. flag on the moon and talking to President Nixon from the moon.

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Last Updated Apr 13 2024 5:48 AM

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