columbus area mensa, col-m, quest, 2000 january

Last month's Quest asked which words from Webster's 1828 dictionary were being defined. It was a tough one; Alma Litten had three correct. The answers as stated by Webster:

1. Electricity	The operations of a very subtil (sic) fluid, which appears to be diffused through most bodies, remarkable for the rapidity of its motion...
2. Symposium	A drinking together; a merry feast.
3. Yankee	A corrupt pronunciation of the word "English" by the native Indians of America.
4. Yahoo	A word used by Chesterfield, I suppose for a savage or a person resembling a savage.
5. Tissue	Cloth interwoven with gold or silver or with figured colors.
6. Bidet	A small horse, formerly allowed to each trooper or dragoon for carrying his baggage.
7. Infection	Act by which poisonous matter, morbid miasma, or exhalations produce disease...
8. Caricature	Figure or description in which beauty's concealed, blemishes exaggerated...
9. Mortify	To lose vital heat and action and suffer dissolution of organic texture, as flesh...
10. Furnace	Place where a vehement fire and heat may be made & maintained, for melting ores...

This month the Quest is for a proper match of the numbered phrase with the lettered well-known person on the right who coined, was one of the first users, or was responsible for development of the phrase.

Send in your educated guess. Answers next month.

1. Baseball's seventh inning stretch. A. P. T. Barnum

2. Before you can say Jack Robinson. B. Winston Churchill

3. It's Greek to me. C. Cicero

4. Siamese twins. D. Charles Dickens

5. Darn clever those Chinese. E. Arthur Conan Doyle

6. Scrape the bottom of the barrel. F. John Milton

7. Business as usual. G. Robert Ripley

8. Food for thought. H. William Shakespeare

9. Crystal clear. I. William Howard Taft

10. To add fuel to the fire. J. Mark Twain