English Language quiz

More questions about English Language

These visible examples show the question style. LearnClash turns the full topic into ranked duels and spaced repetition.

1. 1 Easy

   Which punctuation mark joins two independent English clauses of equal weight?

   Answer: semicolon

   Why: A colon can join clauses too, but it promises the second will explain or amplify the first, where this one treats the two as equals.

2. 2 Medium

   Which English word blends "smoke" and "fog" into one term?

   Answer: smog

   Why: Every other option is a blend too, and smog was already in print in the 1880s, decades before the 1905 London coal smoke paper that made it famous.

3. 3 Hard

   Which punctuation mark combines an English question and exclamation point?

   Answer: interrobang

   Why: An advertising man proposed it in 1962, and the rejected names for it included emphaquest and exclarogative.

4. 4 Easy

   What is an English word that sounds like the noise described?

   Answer: onomatopoeia

   Why: The Greek is onoma and poiein, name and make, so the word literally means the making of a name out of a sound.

5. 5 Medium

   Which symbol was once recited as the 27th letter of the English alphabet?

   Answer: ampersand

   Why: Nineteenth-century pupils ended the alphabet with "and per se and", and slurring that phrase together is where the name comes from.

6. 6 Hard

   Since which century has the singular "they" appeared in English literature?

   Answer: The 1300s

   Why: The Oxford English Dictionary dates it to about 1375, in William and the Werewolf, where the werewolf guards the stolen prince and a cowherd rears him.