英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

dice [dice 词源字典]: dice: [14] Dice originated, as every schoolboy knows, as the plural of die, which it has now virtually replaced in British English as the term for a ‘cube marked with numbers’. Die itself comes via Old French de from Latin datum, the past participle of the verb dare (and source also of English date). The main meaning of dare was ‘give’, but it also had the secondary sense ‘play’, as in ‘play a chess piece’.

The plural of the Old French word was dez (itself occasionally used as a singular), which gave rise to such Middle English forms as des, dees, and deys and, by around 1500, dyse. The singular die survives for ‘dice’ in American English, and also in the later subsidiary sense ‘block or other device for stamping or impressing’ (which originated around 1700).
=> date, donate[dice etymology, dice origin, 英语词源]
donkey: donkey: [18] The usual English word for ‘donkey’ from Anglo-Saxon times was ass, and donkey is not recorded until Francis Grose entered it in his Dictionary of the vulgar tonge 1785; ‘Donkey or Donkey Dick, a he or Jackass’. No one really knows where it came from. The usual explanation offered is that it was based on dun ‘brownish grey’ and the diminutive suffix -ey, with the intermediate k added in imitation of monkey (donkey originally rhymed with monkey).
=> dun
fit: fit: English has three distinct words fit, but the history of them all is very problematical. The verb fit ‘make suitable, be the right size, etc’ [16], and the presumably related adjective ‘proper, appropriate’ [14] may come from a Middle English verb fitten ‘marshal troops’, but that only pushes the difficulty one stage further back, for no one knows where fitten came from. (The derivative outfit dates from the 18th century.) Fit ‘seizure, sudden outburst’ [14] may be the same word as Old English fitt ‘conflict’, whose antecedents again are obscure (fitful was formed from it in around 1600, but was not widely used before the 19th century). Fit ‘section of a poem’ [OE] also comes from an Old English fitt, which might conceivably be identical with Old English fitt ‘conflict’; but an alternative possibility is some connection with Old High German fizza ‘skein’ and Old Norse fit ‘hem’.
flag: flag: English has at least three separate words flag, none of whose origins are known for certain. Both the noun ‘cloth used as an emblem’ [16] and the verb ‘droop, decline’ [16] may have developed from an obsolete 16th-century adjective flag ‘drooping, hanging down’, but no one knows where that came from. Flag the plant [14] is probably related to Danish flæg ‘yellow iris’, but beyond that the trail goes cold. Flag as in flag-stone [15] originally meant ‘piece of turf’.

It probably came from Old Norse flaga ‘stone slab’. This also gave English flaw (which originally meant ‘flake’), which is related to English floe, and goes back to a Germanic base, a variant of which produced English flake.
=> flake, flaw, floe
gorge: gorge: [14] Gorge originally meant ‘throat’; the metaphorical extension to ‘rocky ravine’ did not really take place until the mid 18th century (the semantic connection was presumably ‘narrow opening between which things pass’). The word was borrowed from Old French gorge ‘throat’, which goes back via Vulgar Latin *gurga to Latin gurges ‘whirlpool’ from which English gets regurgitate [17]. The superficially similar gorgeous [15], incidentally, is not related. It was adapted from Old French gorgias ‘fine, elegant’, but no one knows where that came from.
=> regurgitate
ill: ill: [12] ‘Sick’ is not the original meaning of ill. To start with it meant ‘bad’ (a sense which survives, of course, in contexts such as ‘ill-will’, ‘illmannered’, etc), and ‘sick’ did not come on the scene until the 15th century. The word was borrowed from Old Norse illr, which is something of a mystery: it has other modern descendants in Swedish illa and Danish ilde ‘badly’, but its other relations are highly dubious (Irish olc has been compared) and no one knows where it originally came from. The sense ‘sick’ was probably inspired by an impersonal usage in Old Norse which meant literally ‘it is bad to me’.
=> like
key: key: [OE] The Old English ancestor of key was cǣg. This produced a modern English word which to begin with was pronounced to rhyme with bay, and its present-day pronunciation, rhyming with bee, did not come to the fore until the 18th century. No one knows where the word originally came from; it has no living relatives in other Germanic languages.
kick: kick: [14] Kick is one of the mystery words of English. It first appears towards the end of the 14th century, but no one knows where it came from, and it has no relatives in the other Indo- European languages. It may have been a Scandinavian borrowing.
lag: lag: English has three distinct words lag. The verb ‘fall behind’ [16] is perhaps of Scandinavian origin (Norwegian has lagga ‘go slowly’), although a link has been suggested with the lag of fog, seg, lag, a dialect expression used in children’s games which represents an alteration of first, second, last. Lag ‘insulate’ [19] comes from an earlier noun lag ‘barrel stave’, which was also probably borrowed from a Scandinavian language (Swedish has lagg ‘stave’); the original material used for ‘lagging’ was wooden laths.

And finally the noun lag ‘prisoner’ [19] seems to have come from an earlier verb lag, which originally meant ‘steal’, and then ‘catch, imprison’; but no one knows where this came from.
lazy: lazy: [16] Lazy is one of the problem words of English. It suddenly appears in the middle of the 16th century, and gradually replaces the native terms slack, slothful, and idle as the main word for expressing the concept ‘averse to work’, but no one knows for sure where it came from. Early spellings such as laysy led 19th-century etymologists to speculate that it may have been derived from lay, but the more generally accepted theory nowadays is that it was borrowed from Low German. Middle Low German had the similar lasich ‘lazy, loose’, which may go back to an Indo-European form denoting ‘slack’.
limbo: limbo: English has two distinct and probably unrelated words limbo. By far the older is the theological limbo [14], referring originally to that condition in which the souls of the dead exist that are neither in heaven nor in hell. It comes from Latin limbus ‘border, edge’, which in the Middle Ages was used to refer to a region on the borders of, but not actually inside, hell.

It very often turned up in the ablative case, in the phrase in limbo, which is how English adopted it. The other limbo [20], denoting a West Indian dance that involves passing underneath a progressively lowered bar, probably comes from limber ‘flexible, supple’ [16], which in turn might be from limb or possibly from limber ‘detachable forward part of a gun-carriage’ [15] (although spellings of that with a b do not occur before the 17th century).

No one knows where that limber came from, although it might ultimately be Celtic. Alternatively, if the bar is viewed as a sort of boundary that the dancer must cross, the terpsichorean limbo could be related to the theological limbo.
mole: mole: English has four distinct words mole. The oldest is ‘brown spot’ [OE]. It is the descendant of Old English māl, which meant broadly ‘discoloured mark’. This developed in Middle English to ‘spot on the skin’, but the specific sense ‘brown mark’ did not emerge until fairly recently. The word goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *mailam, a derivative of a base meaning ‘spot, mark’ which also produced German malen ‘paint’ and Dutch maalen ‘paint’ (source of English maulstick ‘stick used as a rest by painters’ [17]). Mole the animal [14] was borrowed from Middle Dutch mol.

No one knows for sure where this came from, but its similarity to the now obsolete mouldwarp ‘mole’ [14] (a compound noun whose etymological meaning is ‘earththrower’) suggests that it could represent a truncated version of mouldwarp’s prehistoric Germanic ancestor. The metaphorical application of the word to a ‘traitor working secretly’ has been traced back as far as the 17th century, but its modern currency is due to its use by the British espionage writer John le Carré. Mole ‘harbour wall’ [16] comes via French môle and medieval Greek mólos from Latin mōlēs ‘mass, massive structure’.

The diminutive form of this, coined in modern times, is mōlēcula, from which, via French molécule, English gets molecule [18]. Other relatives are demolish and, possibly, molest [14], which comes ultimately from Latin molestus ‘troublesome’, connected by some scholars with mōlēs. And German mol, a convenient shortening of molekulargewicht ‘molecular weight’, has given English its fourth mole [20], used as the basic unit of measurement for the amount of a substance.
=> maulstick; molecule, molest
quaint: quaint: [13] Quaint was once a more wholehearted term of approval than it is now. In Middle English it meant ‘clever’ or ‘finely or skilfully made’. Its current sense ‘pleasantly curious’ did not emerge until the 18th century. It comes via Old French coint from Latin cognitus ‘known’, the past participle of cognōscere ‘know’ (source of English recognize). The word’s meaning evolved in Old French via the notion of someone who ‘knows’ about something, and hence is an expert at it or is skilful in doing it.
=> cognition, recognize
rag: rag: English has four separate words rag, none of them with very well-documented histories. The origins of the oldest, ‘rough building stone’ [13], are completely unknown. Rag ‘piece of cloth’ [14] is probably a back-formation from ragged [13], which was adapted from Old Norse roggvathr ‘tufted’. This in turn was derived from rogg ‘tuft of fur’, but no one knows where that came from. Rag ‘taunt, piece of fun’ [18] is completely mysterious, although some connection with Danish dialect rag ‘grudge’ has been suggested. And finally rag ‘syncopated jazz’ [19] is short for ragtime, which is probably an alteration of ragged time.
raspberry: raspberry: [17] The origins of the word raspberry are a mystery. At first, the fruit was known simply as raspes or raspis (recorded in an Anglo-Latin text as early as the 13th century), and the -berry was not tacked on until the early 17th century – but no one knows where raspes came from. Its use for a ‘rude noise made by blowing’, first recorded in the 1890s, comes from rhyming slang raspberry tart ‘fart’.
wiseacre: wiseacre: [16] Wiseacre has no etymological connection with acres. The word’s ancestral meaning is ‘person who sees or knows things, prophet’. It was borrowed from Middle Dutch wijsseggher, which denoted ‘soothsayer’ (with no derogatory connotations). And this in turn came from Old High German wīssago, an alteration (due to the similarity of wīs ‘wise’ and sagen ‘say’) of wīzago ‘prophet’, which was derived from the prehistoric Germanic base *wīt- ‘know’ (source of English wise and wit).
affair (n.): c. 1300, "what one has to do," from Anglo-French afere, Old French afaire "business, event; rank, estate" (12c., Modern French affaire), from the infinitive phrase à faire "to do," from Latin ad "to" (see ad-) + facere "to do, make" (see factitious).

A Northern word originally, brought into general use and given a French spelling by Caxton (15c.). General sense of "vague proceedings" (in romance, war, etc.) first attested 1702. Meaning "an affair of the heart; a passionate episode" is from French affaire de coeur (itself attested in English from 1809); to have an affair with someone in this sense is by 1726, earlier have an affair of love:
'Tis manifeſtly contrary to the Law of Nature, that one Woman ſhould cohabit or have an Affair of Love with more than one Man at the ſame time. ["Pufendorf's Law of Nature and Nations," transl. J. Spavan, London, 1716]

Thus, in our dialect, a vicious man is a man of pleasure, a sharper is one that plays the whole game, a lady is said to have an affair, a gentleman to be a gallant, a rogue in business to be one that knows the world. By this means, we have no such things as sots, debauchees, whores, rogues, or the like, in the beau monde, who may enjoy their vices without incurring disagreeable appellations. [George Berkeley, "Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher," 1732]
category (n.): 1580s, from Middle French catégorie, from Late Latin categoria, from Greek kategoria "accusation, prediction, category," verbal noun from kategorein "to speak against; to accuse, assert, predicate," from kata "down to" (or perhaps "against;" see cata-) + agoreuein "to harangue, to declaim (in the assembly)," from agora "public assembly" (see agora). Original sense of "accuse" weakened to "assert, name" by the time Aristotle applied kategoria to his 10 classes of things that can be named.
category should be used by no-one who is not prepared to state (1) that he does not mean class, & (2) that he knows the difference between the two .... [Fowler]
conciseness (n.): "expression of much in few words," 1650s, from concise + -ness.
[Conciseness] is the English word familiar to the ordinary man: concision is the LITERARY CRITIC'S WORD, more recent in English, used by writers under French influence & often requiring the reader to stop & think whether he knows its meaning. [Fowler]
demi-monde (n.): 1855, also demimonde, from French demi-monde "so-so society," literally "half-world," from demi- "half" + monde, from Latin mundus "world" (see mundane).

Popularized by use as title of a comedy by Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895). Dumas' Demi-Monde "is the link between good and bad society ... the world of compromised women, a social limbo, the inmates of which ... are perpetually struggling to emerge into the paradise of honest and respectable ladies" ["Fraser's Magazine," 1855]. Not properly used of courtesans. Compare 18th-century English demi-rep (1749, the second element short for reputation), defined as "a woman that intrigues with every man she likes, under the name and appearance of virtue ... in short, whom every body knows to be what no body calls her" [Fielding].
distract (v.): mid-14c., "to draw asunder or apart, to turn aside" (literal and figurative), from Latin distractus, past participle of distrahere "draw in different directions," from dis- "away" (see dis-) + trahere "to draw" (see tract (n.1)).

Sense of "to throw into a state of mind in which one knows not how to act" is from 1580s. Related: Distracted; distracting; distractedly; distractedness.
embarrass (v.): 1670s, "perplex, throw into doubt," from French embarrasser (16c.), literally "to block," from Italian imbarrazzo, from imbarrare "to bar," from assimilated form of in- "into, upon" (see in- (2)) + Vulgar Latin *barra "bar" (see bar (n.1)).

Meaning "to hamper, hinder" is from 1680s. Meaning "make (someone) feel awkward" first recorded 1828. Original sense preserved in embarras de richesse (1751), from French (1726): the condition of having more wealth than one knows what to do with. Related: Embarrassed; embarrassing; embarrassingly.
experto crede: Latin, "take it from one who knows" ("Aeneid," xi.283); dative singular of expertus (see expert (adj.)) + imperative singular of credere (see credo).
global (adj.): 1670s, "spherical," from globe + -al (1). Meaning "worldwide, universal, pertaining to the whole globe of the earth" is from 1892, from a sense development in French. Global village first attested 1960, popularized, if not coined, by Canadian educator Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).
Postliterate man's electronic media contract the world to a village or tribe where everything happens to everyone at the same time: everyone knows about, and therefore participates in, everything that is happening the minute it happens. Television gives this quality of simultaneity to events in the global village. [Carpenter & McLuhan, "Explorations in Communication," 1960]
goddot (interj.): "certainly, surely," c. 1300, corruption of God wot "God knows."
grammarian (n.): late 14c., "writer on (Latin) grammar; philologist, etymologist;" in general use, "learned man," from Old French gramairien "wise man, person who knows Latin; magician" (Modern French grammairien), agent noun from grammaire (see grammar).
grow (v.): Old English growan (of plants) "to flourish, increase, develop, get bigger" (class VII strong verb; past tense greow, past participle growen), from Proto-Germanic *gro- (cognates: Old Norse groa "to grow" (of vegetation), Old Frisian groia, Dutch groeien, Old High German gruoen), from PIE root *ghre- "to grow, become green" (see grass). Applied in Middle English to human beings (c. 1300) and animals (early 15c.) and their parts, supplanting Old English weaxan (see wax (v.)) in the general sense of "to increase." Transitive sense "cause to grow" is from 1774. To grow on "gain in the estimation of" is from 1712.
Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy? ... Do you know who made you?" "Nobody, as I knows on," said the child. ... "I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me." [Harriet B. Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 1851]
hafiz (n.): title of a Muslim who knows the whole of the Quran by heart, from Persian hafiz, from Arabic hafiz "a guard, one who keeps (in memory)."
hay fever (n.): also hay-fever, 1825, from hay + fever. Also called summer catarrh (1828); not much noted before the 1820s, when it was sometimes derided as a "fashion" in disease.
People are apt to sneeze, in hot weather for example; and people do not die of sneezing now-a-days, as they did in days that no one knows any thing about. We cannot give six draughts a-day, at one and nine pence each, for sneezing: call it the hay-fever. What a wonderful man! what a clever man! he understands the hay-fever: call him in! Thus is the hay-fever among the last in the list of fashionables. ["On Fashions in Physic," London Magazine, October 1825]
historian (n.): mid-15c., from Middle French historien (14c.), from Latin historia (see history). As "writer of history in the higher sense" (distinguished from a mere annalist or chronicler), from 1530s. The Old English word was þeod-wita.
[T]he historian's fallacy is the error of assuming that a man who has a given historical experience knows it, when he has had it, to be all that a historian would know it to be, with the advantage of historical perspective. [David Hackett Fischer, "Historians' Fallacies," 1970]
hub (n.): "solid center of a wheel," 1640s, perhaps from hubbe, originally "lump," the source of hob of a fireplace and hobnail, as in boots. A wheelwright's word, not generally known or used until c. 1828; it reached wider currency in connection with bicycles. Meaning "center of interest or activity or importance" first recorded 1858 in writings of Oliver W. Holmes, and originally especially of Boston.
"Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system." [O.W. Holmes, "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table"]

"[E]verybody knows that Boston used to be called the Hub, meaning the hub of the universe. It may still be the hub, because the center of a wheel moves slowly." [J.P. Marquand, "Life," March 24, 1941]
literate (adj.): "educated, instructed," early 15c., from Latin literatus/litteratus "educated, learned," literally "one who knows the letters," formed in imitation of Greek grammatikos from Latin littera/litera "letter" (see letter (n.1)).
majorette (n.): "baton-twirler," 1941, short for drum-majorette (1938), fem. of drum-major (1590s).
The perfect majorette is a pert, shapely, smiling extrovert, who loves big, noisy crowds and knows how to make those crowds love her. ["Life" magazine, Oct. 10, 1938]
(The article notes that the activity "has been going on for about six years now").
nelson (n.): type of wrestling hold, 1875, apparently from a proper or surname, but no one now knows whose.
Presently, Stubbs, the more skilful as well as the more powerful of the twain, seizes the luckless Jumper in a terrible gripe, known to the initiated as the Full Nelson. ["Lancashire Recreations," in "Chambers's Journal," April 24, 1875]
north: Old English norð "northern" (adj.), "northwards" (adv.), from Proto-Germanic *nurtha- (cognates: Old Norse norðr, Old Saxon north, Old Frisian north, Middle Dutch nort, Dutch noord, German nord), possibly ultimately from PIE *ner- (1) "left," also "below," as north is to the left when one faces the rising sun (cognates: Sanskrit narakah "hell," Greek enerthen "from beneath," Oscan-Umbrian nertrak "left"). The same notion underlies Old Irish tuath "left; northern;" Arabic shamal "left hand; north." The usual word for "north" in the Romance languages ultimately is from English, for example Old French north (Modern French nord), borrowed from Old English norð; Italian, Spanish norte are borrowed from French.
Ask where's the North? At York 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland at the Orcades; and there
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.
[Pope, "Essay on Man"]
As a noun, c. 1200, from the adverb. North Pole attested from mid-15c. (earlier the Arctic pole, late 14c.). North American (n.) first used 1766, by Franklin; as an adjective, from 1770.
pathognomonic (adj.): 1640s (implied in pathognomonical), from patho- "disease, suffering" + Greek gnomonikos "able to judge," from gnomon "one who knows" (see gnomon).
pork (n.): c. 1300 (early 13c. in surname Porkuiller), "flesh of a pig as food," from Old French porc "pig, swine, boar," and directly from Latin porcus "pig, tame swine," from PIE *porko- "young swine" (cognates: Umbrian purka; Old Church Slavonic prase "young pig;" Lithuanian parsas "pig;" and Old English fearh, Middle Dutch varken, both from Proto-Germanic *farhaz).

Pork barrel in the literal sense is from 1801, American English; meaning "state's financial resources (available for distribution)" is attested from 1907 (in full, national pork barrel); it was noted as an expression of U.S. President President William Howard Taft:
"Now there is a proposition that we issue $500,000,000 or $1,000,000,000 of bonds for a waterway, and then that we just apportion part to the Mississippi and part to the Atlantic, a part to the Missouri and a part to the Ohio. I am opposed to it. I am opposed to it because it not only smells of the pork barrel, but it will be the pork barrel itself. Let every project stand on its bottom." ["The Outlook," Nov. 6, 1909, quoting Taft]
The magazine article that includes the quote opens with:
We doubt whether any one knows how or when, or from what application of what story, the phrase "the National pork barrel" has come into use. If not a very elegant simile, it is at least an expressive one, and suggests a graphic picture of Congressmen eager for local advantage going, one after another, to the National pork barrel to take away their slices for home consumption.
Pork in this sense is attested from 1862 (compare figurative use of bacon). Pork chop is attested from 1858. Pork pie is from 1732; pork-pie hat (1855) originally described a woman's style popular c. 1855-65, so called for its shape.
prig (n.): "precisian in speech or manners," 1753, originally in reference to theological scruples (1704), of unknown origin; earlier appearances of the same word meaning "dandy, fop" (1670s), "thief" (c. 1600; in form prigger recorded from 1560s) could be related, as could thieves' cant prig "a tinker" (1560s).
A p[rig] is wise beyond his years in all the things that do not matter. A p. cracks nuts with a steam hammer: that is, calls in the first principles of morality to decide whether he may, or must, do something of as little importance as drinking a glass of beer. On the whole, one may, perhaps, say that all his different characteristics come from the combination, in varying proportions, of three things--the desire to do his duty, the belief that he knows better than other people, & blindness to the difference in value between different things. ["anonymous essay," quoted in Fowler, 1926]
Related: Priggery.
receptionist (n.): "person hired to receive clients in an office," 1900, from reception + -ist. Originally in photography studios.
Let me not forget the receptionist -- generally and preferably, a woman of refined and gentle manners, well informed and specially gifted in handling people of varied dispositions. A woman especially who knows how to handle other women, and who can make herself beloved by the children who may visit the studio. A woman, also, who in a thoroughly suave and dignified way, knows just how to handle the young man of the period so that the photographer may be glad to have his business. What a power the receptionist is when properly chosen and trained. It is not too much to say that she can both make and destroy a business, if she has the amount of discretionary power given to her in some galleries. [John A. Tennant, "Business Methods Applied in Photography," "Wilson's Photographic Magazine," October 1900]
Earlier as an adjective in theology and law (1867).
salesmanship (n.): 1853, from salesman + -ship.
The modern system of salesmanship has become so much like persecution reduced to a science, that it is quite a luxury to be allowed the use of your own discretion, without being dragooned, by a shopkeeper's deputy, into looking at what you do not care to see, or buying what you would not have. A man in his sane mind, with the usual organs of speech, has a right to be treated as if he knows what he wants, and is able to ask for it. ["The Literary World," Feb. 26, 1853]
sciolist (n.): 1610s, "smatterer, pretender to knowledge," from Late Latin sciolus "one who knows a little," diminutive of scius "knowing," from scire "to know" (see science) + -ist. Related: Sciolistic.
Topsy: slave-girl character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852), immortal in cliche for her response to a question about her origin put to her by the pious Northern abolitionist Miss Ophelia:
"Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?"
The child looked bewildered, but grinned, as usual.
"Do you know who made you?"
"Nobody as I knows on," said the child, with a short laugh.
The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added--
"I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me."
In addition to being often misquoted by the addition of a "just" (or "jes'"), the line is sometimes used inappropriately in 20c. writing to indicate something that got large without anyone intending it to.
trivia (n.): "trivialities, bits of information of little consequence," by 1932, from the title of a popular book by U.S.-born British aphorist Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) first published in 1902 but popularized in 1918 (with "More Trivia" following in 1921 and a collected edition including both in 1933), containing short essays often tied to observation of small things and commonplace moments. Trivia is Latin, plural of trivium "place where three roads meet;" in transferred use, "an open place, a public place." The adjectival form of this, trivialis, meant "public," hence "common, commonplace" (see trivial). The Romans also had trivius dea, the "goddess of three ways," another name for Hecate, perhaps originally in her triple aspect (Selene/Diana/Proserpine), but also as the especial divinity of crossroads (Virgil has "Nocturnisque hecate triviis ululata per urbes"). John Gay took this arbitrarily as the name of a goddess of streets and roads for his mock Georgic "Trivia: Or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London" (1716); Smith writes in his autobiography that he got the title from Gay.
I KNOW too much; I have stuffed too many of the facts of History and Science into my intellectuals. My eyes have grown dim over books; believing in geological periods, cave dwellers, Chinese Dynasties, and the fixed stars has prematurely aged me. ["Trivia," 1918 edition]
Then noted c. 1965 as an informal fad game among college students wherein one asked questions about useless bits of information from popular culture ("What was Donald Duck's address?") and others vied to answer first.
Nobody really wins in this game which concentrates on sports, comics and television. Everyone knows that Amos's wife on the "Amos 'n' Andy Show" is Ruby, but who knows that she is from Marietta, Georgia? Trivia players do. They also know the fourth man in the infield of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance, the Canadian who shot down Baron Von Richtofen, and can name ten Hardy Boy books. ["Princeton Alumni Weekly," Nov. 9, 1965]
The board game Trivial Pursuit was released 1982 and was a craze in U.S. for several years thereafter.
moi: "Me (used in questions when accused of something that one knows one is guilty of)", French, 'me'.
quien sabe: "Originally and frequently in Spanish-speaking contexts: ‘Who knows?’, ‘who can tell?’", Mid 19th cent.; earliest use found in Robert Fitzroy (1805–1865), hydrographer and meteorologist. From Spanish quién sabe who knows from quién (interrogative pronoun) who + sabe, third person singular present indicative of saber to know.