School Daze

So I gave my classes a quiz today about language-oriented stuff (extra credit, as I knew they would probably have a tough time with it), and here are some of their answers:

What is a Pyrrhic victory?
"Victory by fire" (wrong, but at least they're thinking)

What is Murphy's Law?
"What goes up must come down" (three people said that)
"Gravity" (thanks for inventing gravity, Mr. Murphy; my sammiches kept floating away)

What does penultimate mean?
"The perfect writing utensil" (four answers like that)

If you talk about a woman's gams, to what are you referring?
"Back fat" (ha!)
"grandmother" (that's a prized set of grandmas you have there, sister!)
"Boobies" (sometimes the simplest ones are the best)

Give an example of a palindrome.
"Anytime McCain's running mate spoke"
"Something in your body" (Yeah, it's that racecar I swallowed)
"House of pain" (you know, like Mad Max Beyond Palindrome; two men enter, one man leaves...backwards!)
"Sarah's Fortress of Solitude" (where she goes to keep Letterman from knocking up her daughter)


Define homocentric.
"Gay bar"
"A style of dress where as individuals dress in bright collors and they are mostly bisexual" (!)
"someone who is obsessed with homosexual topics"
"an eccentric human"


Finish this old saying: "A bird in the hand is worth ____"
"Five in the pan" (I think I'd much rather have five cooked birds than one in my mitt, but hey...) "Billions of things" (I caught a pigeon! I'm off to the car dealership!)
"The crap it leaves behind" (obviously an ornithophobe)
" a penny in the bank" (but it all adds up!)


What is a Briton?
"a type of water filtering system" (classic)

What is a Catch-22? "A sticky wicket" (Who's in my class, Sir Aluminium Bootbonnet? Name that reference, by the way)

You might go swimming in a scuba suit. What do the letters in SCUBA stand for?
"Swimming in the Cold water Under or Below the Atlantic" (wrong, but I like it!)
"Stop Chewing Under Big Apples"
"Sea Clothes Used Clothing Attire" (I so want to shop there)
"Scared Cause U Bout out of Air"


What do tabasco sauce, jello, and kleenex have in common?
"vinegar" (New Kleenex with the agonizing sting of vinegar!)
"They're all used when someone has a cold" (Nothing like jello to put you back on your feet)
"They are all strangely soft"
"They all touch the mouth" (Yeah, I like to lick my kleenex after I blow my nose)
"animal fat"

What is a mondegreen?
"An ugly shade of green"

What distinguishes a marionette from a puppet?
"The marionette uses strings and a tape player" (I really think marionettes need to get with the 21st century and use CDs)

What is a didgeridoo?
"A drug used for male enhancement" (hey, if I have to swallow a didgeridoo for that "something extra," I'll do it)

What does antebellum mean? "part of the brain" (Six answers like this)


What is suffrage?
"hardship" (almost EVERY answer was like this)


What is Esperanto?
"European sports car" (It's what Shatner drives!)
"A Mexican word" (spoken by all those practicioners of the Mexican language)
"A Latin music group" (but they can't get Ricky Martin for the reunion)
"A Spanish country" (one of the many) "Tonto's cousin" (you heap wrong, Kemosabe!)
"A freedom fighter of Mexico" (Benicio Del Toro IS...Esperanto!)


God bless 'em...