Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

The hardest word quiz you'll take this year

Test your linguistic knowledge with this challenging quiz from Haggard Hawks.

Elsa Vulliamy
Friday 11 December 2015 19:53 GMT
Comments
(Chris Dlugosz/flickr/Creative Commons)

Consider yourself an expert in the English language? Thanks to language and etymology blog ‘Haggard Hawks’, you now have the chance to prove it.

The experts behind the book Haggard Hawks and Paltry Platoons: the origins of English in ten words have brought you a 20-question quiz that will test how well you really know your words.

The idea is to match each of the 20 words to its description. For example, if the description was ‘word that uses all five vowels in order exactly once’ the answer would be ‘abstentious’.

You have four minutes to correctly marry them up, but beware – it’s tricky!

Let us know how it went in the comments below.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in