Gringo
This term for white, English-speaking Americans has an interesting story attached to its etymology. Unfortunately, like so many of the interesting stories recounted in these pages, this one is not true. The story goes that the name originated during the 1846-48 Mexican-American War. Supposedly, Yankee soldiers were fond of singing a song, based on a Robert Burns poem [Scottish national poet/songwriter], which was popular at the time, the refrain of which went "Green grow the rushes, O." (Alternate versions of the tale give it as "Green grow the lilacs.") The Mexicans, probably as tired of hearing the song as you are of the latest Top-40 hit, began calling the Americans "green grows," which eventually became gringos. Partridge records a variant of the tale. In his version it was not Yankees, but rather that it was Irish volunteers in Bolivar's army that were fond of singing the song. While this would take the origin of the term back a few decades, it is not far enough back. While the earliest English-language usage is from the 1840s, the earliest use of gringo in Spanish is far older than the Mexican-American War or Bolivar's 1819 liberation campaign. According to Rawson , it appears in the Diccionario Castellano in 1787. That dictionary says that it was used in Malaga to refer to anyone who spoke Spanish badly, and in Madrid in reference to the Irish. Gringo probably comes from the Spanish griego, or "Greek". So it is akin to the phrase "it's Greek to me" (or in Spanish hablar en griego) and the word . Given its 1849 English debut, it seems likely that it was in fact brought back by U.S. soldiers, but had nothing to do with any songs.

Quiz
The story goes that in 1791 a Dublin theater owner named James Daly made a bet that he could introduce a word into the language within twenty-four hours. He then went out and hired a bunch of street urchins to write the word quiz, which was a nonsense word, on walls around the city of Dublin. Within a day, the word was common currency and had acquired a meaning--since no one knew what it meant, everyone thought it was some sort of test--and Daly had some extra cash in his pocket. It's a fun story. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no evidence to support it and the term was in use prior to the alleged bet in 1791. The first appearance of the word is from 1782 and means an odd person. This sense survives today in the word quizzical. It later acquired a meaning of to make fun of, or to mock. How it acquired its current meaning of a test is unknown, but that sense did not appear until 1867 and then it was in the United States. The OED2 has a cite from 1847 where the word appears: "She com back and quiesed us," which could be a clue to its origin. Quiz as a test could be a corruption of the Latin Qui es, meaning "Who are you?". American Heritage says it may be from the English dialect verb quiset, meaning to question. In any case it is probably from the same root as question and inquisitive.