chicken or egg

Which Came First?

Do you know which word is older?

Sometimes it’s easy to tell which one of two words first entered the English language (ax probably came before airplane, for instance). Sometimes it’s hard to tell. The words in the following quiz are in the second category. Our dates on these words are based on current research — if you have concrete evidence of earlier usage of any of these words please send it to us and if it checks out you'll be famous! We'll put your picture in the dictionary!! You get to choose the next word we add to the dictionary!!! Eh, not really.

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Which came first?

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Which word can mean both “give approval” and “impose a penalty”?

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