Roots
Testing times
Deepti

THE word ‘examination’ comes from the Latin ‘examinare’ that means ‘weigh or test’. ‘Test’ can be traced to the Latin ‘testa’ that was ‘a jug or a shell’.

In Middle English, it came to be used as ‘testu’ to denote a cupel used to treat gold or silver alloys or ore. It is still not clear how ‘test’ came to be synonymous with ‘examine’, perhaps it evolved metaphorically from the idea of the purity of gold and silver. Early 17th century onwards, it came to be used as a verb. The botanical usage can be traced to the last part of the 18th century when in the sense of ‘shell’ ‘test’ came to be used for the seed coat of a seed.

Most exams today mean writing, so here are some interesting words about writing.‘Sprachgefuhl’ refers to the intuitive feeling that a person may have for the natural idiom of a language. Originally German, this word is made up of ‘sprache’ meaning ‘speech or language’ and ‘gefuhl’ meaning ‘feeling’.

A ‘curlicue’ is a decorative curl or twist used in writing. Originating from the old French ‘cue’ or tail, it took on its current sense in the 19th century from ‘curly plus cue’ that means ‘a pigtail’.

‘Folio’ is a word that can be used to good effect when talking about writing. Apart from the reference to the folio edition of Shakespeare’s works, it also has a rich past. ‘Folio’ refers to ‘the individual leaf of paper that forms part of a book’. ‘Folio’ can also be used for the page number in a printed book, a sheet of paper folded once to form two leaves of a book, the size of a book made up of such sheets (as for Shakespeare’s works) or a volume of the largest standard size. The ‘verso’ is the left-hand page while the ‘recto’ is the right hand page of the open book or the front of a loose document.

Let me end here, as I can feel mogigraphia and graphospasm coming on (both fancy names for writer’s cramp); but please don’t say that to your examiner.