ETYMOLOGY Quiz — Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Who is credited with supplying the Etymology section of Moby-Dick?

• A Sub-Sub-Librarian
• A Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School
• Ishmael
• Captain Ahab

What does the Usher's handkerchief feature?

• Images of whales
• The flags of all the known nations of the world
• Latin inscriptions
• Nautical knots and anchors

According to the Etymology, what does the word "whale" relate to in its Danish origin?

• Swimming or diving
• Roundness or rolling
• Greatness or power
• Breathing or spouting

What is the first source quoted in the Extracts section?

• Homer's Odyssey
• Shakespeare's Hamlet
• The Book of Genesis
• Hakluyt's Voyages

What does the narrator call the Sub-Sub-Librarian?

• A noble scholar
• A painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil
• A master of cetology
• A consumptive grammarian

What activity "mildly reminded" the Usher of his mortality?

• Reading about whales
• Teaching grammar to students
• Dusting his old grammars
• Writing etymologies

Which of the following Shakespeare quotations appears in the Extracts?

• "To be or not to be"
• "Very like a whale"
• "All the world's a stage"
• "Out, out, brief candle"

What does the Hakluyt quote criticize people for leaving out of the word "whale-fish"?

• The letter W
• The letter H
• The suffix "-fish"
• The vowel sound

Which of these details actually appear in the Etymology and Extracts sections?

Which of these sources are quoted in the Extracts section?

What does "consumptive" mean as used in: "Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School"?

• Extremely hungry or greedy
• Suffering from tuberculosis or a wasting disease
• Obsessed with consuming knowledge
• Wasteful or extravagant

What does "cetology" mean as used in: "you must not take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements for veritable gospel cetology"?

• The art of whale hunting
• The branch of zoology that studies whales and dolphins
• The history of maritime exploration
• The study of ancient sea creatures

What does "incontinently" mean as used in: "down it goes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his"?

• Reluctantly and with hesitation
• Immediately and without restraint
• Partially and incompletely
• Violently and destructively