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Word and Language Trivia Questions for Kids and Families
Homophones, haiku and word origins: thirty word and language trivia questions with answers, from easy to hard, for word lovers of every age.
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Easy word and language trivia questions for kids
1.What do you call words that sound the same but mean different things, like 'flower' and 'flour'?
Homophones. 'Their', 'there' and 'they're' are a famous trio.
2.What do you call a word that means the same as another word?
A synonym. 'Happy', 'joyful' and 'elated' are synonyms.
3.How many vowels are in the English alphabet, not counting Y?
Five: A, E, I, O and U. Y sometimes works as a vowel, as in 'gym'.
4.What kind of word names a person, place or thing, like 'cat' or 'city'?
A noun. Proper nouns, like 'Paris', start with a capital letter.
5.What does the prefix 'un-' usually mean, as in 'unhappy'?
Not. Prefixes go at the start of a word, and suffixes go at the end.
6.Which punctuation mark shows that something belongs to someone, as in 'Sam's hat'?
An apostrophe. Apostrophes also show missing letters, as in 'don't'.
7.What kind of word describes a noun, like 'purple' in 'the purple flower'?
An adjective. 'Adjective' comes from a Latin word meaning 'added' or 'attached'.
8.What kind of word takes the place of a noun, like 'he', 'it' or 'you'?
A pronoun. 'Pronoun' comes from Latin words meaning 'in place of' and 'name'.
9.If a test is 'a piece of cake', what does that mean?
It's very easy. The saying seems to have started in Britain's Royal Air Force in the late 1930s, for an easy mission.
10.Which word for a late-morning meal is made by blending 'breakfast' and 'lunch'?
Brunch. The word was first recorded in the late 1890s.
11.Which letter is silent at the start of the word 'knife'?
K. In Old English, the word was spelled 'cnif'.
12.What does the Spanish word 'gracias' mean?
Thank you. It's the plural of 'gracia', which means 'grace'.
Medium word and language trivia questions
13.Which language has the most native speakers in the world?
Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin uses tones, so the pitch of your voice can change a word's meaning.
14.What is a haiku?
A short Japanese poem. A traditional haiku has three lines with 5, 7 and 5 syllables.
15.What do you call starting nearby words with the same sound, as in 'Peter Piper picked a peck'?
Alliteration. The word comes from the Latin 'littera,' meaning 'letter,' and has been used in English since the 1600s.
16.What do you call a word made by rearranging the letters of another word, like 'angel' from 'glean'?
An anagram. 'Dormitory' can be rearranged into 'dirty room'.
17.What do the letters ASL stand for?
American Sign Language. ASL is a complete language with its own grammar, and it's different from British Sign Language.
18.Before a show, actors often tell each other 'Break a leg!' What does it mean?
Good luck!. No one knows for sure where it came from; it may be a translation of a German good-luck saying.
19.The word 'emoji' comes from which language?
Japanese. 'E' means picture and 'moji' means written character.
20.The name 'hippopotamus' comes from Greek words meaning what?
River horse. Both 'hippopotamuses' and 'hippopotami' are correct plurals.
21.The English word 'cookie' comes from a Dutch word meaning what?
Little cake. The Dutch word is 'koekje', and 'cookie' was first recorded in English in the 1750s.
22.What part of speech are joining words like 'and', 'but' and 'or'?
Conjunctions. English has seven coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, or, nor, so and yet.
Hard word and language trivia questions for adults
23.The English words 'shampoo' and 'pajamas' were borrowed from languages of which country?
India. 'Shampoo' comes from a Hindi word meaning 'to press,' and in English it first meant a massage.
24.The word 'panic' comes from the name of which Greek god?
Pan. It came into English in the late 1500s through French, from the Greek 'panikos', meaning 'of Pan'.
25.What is the name of the punctuation mark that combines a question mark and an exclamation point?
The interrobang. 'Bang' was printers' slang for an exclamation point, and the word was first recorded in the late 1960s.
26.What do you call a slip of the tongue that swaps the first sounds of words, like 'sew you to a sheet' for 'show you to a seat'?
A spoonerism. It's named after William Spooner (1844-1930), an English clergyman and scholar.
27.The word 'palindrome' comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Running back again (recurring). The word was first recorded in English in the 1630s.
28.English speakers sometimes say 'Gesundheit!' after a sneeze. What does this German word mean?
Health. It's used much like 'Bless you!' to wish good health to someone who just sneezed.
29.The word 'kayak' comes from the language of which Arctic people?
The Inuit. Traditional kayaks were made by stretching watertight animal skins over a light frame.
30.What is the name of the Korean alphabet, created under King Sejong the Great?
Hangul. It was created in 1443 and officially proclaimed in 1446, three years later.
Ways to use these word and language questions
Use the parts-of-speech and silent-letter questions as a warm-up before a spelling bee, asking the winner of each one to spell the answer out loud too. At dinner, turn it into a word game: whoever gets 'gracias' or 'Gesundheit' has to teach the table one more word from another language. Save the idioms for a road trip and let kids invent a new saying as good as 'a piece of cake'. Teachers can use the anagram and spoonerism questions for a five-minute brain break, then send older students to a dictionary to find where words like 'panic' and 'hippopotamus' came from.
Play Words & Language trivia together
Room Trivia has a whole words & language category with different questions: four answers to pick from, points for speed, and a scoreboard. Put it on a TV or laptop and everyone answers on their own phone. Free, with no app and no account.