46 questions with answers · tap one to see its answer
Trivia Questions for Adults
Trivia questions for adults are about the things grown-ups half know and love to argue about: money and work, where words come from, design and brands, travel, cars, the arts and pop culture from the 1970s to the 2010s. These 46 questions are mostly medium difficulty, good for a dinner party, an office quiz or a trivia night with friends, and every one is family friendly.
Every answer was checked against two independent sources on November 9, 2026.
Unwanted junk email is called spam after a sketch by which British comedy group?
Answer: Monty Python
In the 1970 sketch, a cafe puts Spam in nearly every dish while a group of Vikings drowns out the customers with singing.
Checked against Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and American Heritage Dictionary
Blue-chip stocks get their name from the highest-value chips in which card game?
Answer: Poker
Blue chips traditionally carry the top value in poker, so the term came to mean large, dependable companies.
Checked against Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and American Heritage Dictionary
BlackBerry smartphones, hugely popular in the 2000s, were made by a company from which country?
Answer: Canada
Research In Motion, based in Waterloo, Ontario, renamed itself BlackBerry in 2013.
Checked against Wikipedia and The Canadian Encyclopedia
Which Japanese company launched the Walkman portable cassette player in 1979?
Answer: Sony
It was launched under the leadership of Akio Morita, who personally oversaw its development.
Checked against Wikipedia and encyclopedia.com
The English word shampoo was borrowed from which language?
Answer: Hindi
It comes from Hindi champo, from a verb meaning to press or knead, and at first meant a massage rather than washing hair.
Checked against Wikipedia, American Heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com
The word quarantine comes from the Italian for how many days?
Answer: Forty
Venice required ships arriving from plague-hit ports to wait 40 days before anyone could come ashore.
Checked against Wikipedia, cdc.gov and American Heritage Dictionary
Reflecting an old belief in astrology, the word disaster literally means what?
Answer: Bad star (ill-starred)
It came into English through French from Italian disastro, built from the pejorative prefix dis- and astro, meaning star.
Checked against Wikipedia, American Heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com
The word tycoon, for a powerful business leader, comes from which language?
Answer: Japanese
Taikun, meaning great lord or great prince, was a title used for the shogun in Japan's dealings with foreigners in the 1800s.
Checked against Wikipedia, American Heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com
The word jumbo caught on thanks to a giant elephant that London Zoo sold to which American showman in 1882?
Answer: P. T. Barnum
Jumbo became the star of Barnum's circus, and his name came to mean anything extra large.
Checked against Wikipedia, lindahall.org and londonmuseum.org.uk
The word boycott comes from Charles Boycott, a land agent shunned by his community in which country in 1880?
Answer: Ireland
Local people refused to work for him, trade with him or serve him, and newspapers soon turned his name into a verb.
Checked against Wikipedia and American Heritage Dictionary
Sideburns are named after which American Civil War general, famous for his bushy side whiskers?
Answer: Ambrose Burnside
The style was first called burnsides, and the two halves of the name were later swapped around.
Checked against Wikipedia and American Heritage Dictionary
The fabric denim takes its name from which French city?
Answer: Nîmes
Denim comes from serge de Nîmes, the name of a sturdy fabric associated with the southern French city.
Checked against Wikipedia and American Heritage Dictionary
Bluetooth wireless technology is named after Harald Bluetooth, a 10th-century king who mainly ruled which country?
Answer: Denmark
Harald also ruled Norway for a time, and the Bluetooth logo merges the runes for his initials, H and B.
Checked against Wikipedia, bluetooth.com and UNESCO
The word wiki, as in Wikipedia, comes from a Hawaiian word meaning what?
Answer: Quick
Ward Cunningham named his 1995 software after the Wiki Wiki Shuttle buses at the Honolulu airport.
Checked against Wikipedia, c2.com and American Heritage Dictionary
The radio distress call mayday was adapted from a phrase in which language?
Answer: French
It echoes the French venez m'aider, meaning come and help me, and was adopted as a radio distress call in the 1920s.
Checked against Wikipedia, connexionfrance.com and American Heritage Dictionary
Which Swedish carmaker's name means I roll in Latin?
Answer: Volvo
The name was first owned by ball-bearing maker SKF, years before the first Volvo car rolled out in 1927.
Checked against Wikipedia, volvoclub.org.uk and volvogroup.com
The six stars on the Subaru car logo represent which star cluster?
Answer: The Pleiades
Subaru is the Japanese name for the cluster, which is also known as the Seven Sisters.
Checked against Wikipedia, media.subaru.com and NASA
The stainless-steel DeLorean DMC-12, star of Back to the Future, had which distinctive kind of doors?
Answer: Gull-wing doors
The car was built at a factory in Dunmurry, a few miles from Belfast in Northern Ireland, until production ended in 1982.
Checked against Wikipedia and ulstertransportmuseum.org
In Australia, the car-based pickup called a ute gets its name from which word?
Answer: Utility
Ford Australia launched its first coupe utility in 1934, mixing a car's cabin with a small cargo tray.
Checked against Wikipedia, justcars.com.au and Dictionary.com
Bubble Wrap was invented in 1957, when its creators first tried to sell it as what?
Answer: Textured wallpaper
When that failed, they pitched it as greenhouse insulation before it found its calling as protective packaging.
Checked against Wikipedia and Smithsonian Magazine
Finnish company Nokia began in 1865 as what kind of business?
Answer: A wood pulp mill
Nokia later made rubber goods and cables before turning to mobile phones.
Checked against Wikipedia, collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk and paper-world.com
Before it made cars, Toyota's parent company built which machines for the textile industry?
Answer: Automatic looms
Sakichi Toyoda's automatic loom could stop itself when something went wrong, an idea called jidoka that later became central to how Toyota builds cars.
Checked against Wikipedia, global.toyota and toyota-industries.com
Adidas founder Adi Dassler fell out with his brother Rudolf, who founded which rival sportswear brand?
Answer: Puma
Both companies grew out of the brothers' shoe factory in the small Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach.
Checked against Wikipedia, encyclopedia.com and adidas-group.com
Häagen-Dazs ice cream, despite its Scandinavian-sounding name, was founded in which US city?
Answer: New York City
Reuben and Rose Mattus started it in the Bronx in 1960 and made up the name to sound Danish.
Checked against Wikipedia, icecream.com and mentalfloss.com
The arcade game Pac-Man was originally released in Japan under what name?
Answer: Puck Man
The name comes from paku-paku, a Japanese word for the sound of munching.
Checked against Wikipedia and museumofplay.org
The puzzle game Tetris was created in 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov in which country?
Answer: The Soviet Union
Its name blends tetra, Greek for four (every piece has four squares), with tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.
Checked against Wikipedia and amp.cnn.com
The word emoji comes from Japanese words meaning picture and what?
Answer: Character
Despite the resemblance, it is unrelated to the English word emotion.
Checked against Wikipedia, sciencefriday.com and Dictionary.com
The Trans-Siberian Railway runs from Moscow to which Pacific port city?
Answer: Vladivostok
The main line from Moscow to Vladivostok runs for more than 9,000 kilometers.
Checked against Wikipedia and seat61.com
Which Nigerian author wrote the 1958 novel Things Fall Apart?
Answer: Chinua Achebe
It was Achebe's first novel and has since been translated into dozens of languages.
Checked against Wikipedia and poetryfoundation.org
Which Japanese author wrote the novels Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore?
Answer: Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, takes its title from the Beatles song of the same name.
Checked against Wikipedia and The Guardian
The mobile money service M-Pesa launched in 2007 in which African country?
Answer: Kenya
The service lets people store, send and receive money using a mobile phone.
Checked against Wikipedia and news.mit.edu
The original Volkswagen Beetle ended production in 2003 at a factory in which country?
Answer: Mexico
The last one, built in Puebla, ended a run of more than 21 million Beetles.
Checked against Wikipedia and volkswagen-newsroom.com
The Hills Hoist, a rotary clothesline found in countless backyards, comes from which country?
Answer: Australia
It was first made in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1945.
Checked against Wikipedia and smh.com.au
The letters YKK stamped on many zippers stand for a company from which country?
Answer: Japan
YKK stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, a later name of the business Tadao Yoshida founded in 1934.
Checked against Wikipedia and ykkamericas.com
The word tsunami comes from Japanese words meaning what?
Answer: Harbor wave
Tsunamis are usually caused by undersea earthquakes and have little to do with tides, despite the old name tidal wave.
Checked against Wikipedia, American Heritage Dictionary and NOAA
George Eastman invented which camera brand name partly because he liked the strong letter K?
Answer: Kodak
He wanted a short name that could not be mispronounced and did not resemble any other name.
Checked against Wikipedia and encyclopedia.com
The word muscle comes from a Latin word meaning which small animal?
Answer: Mouse (little mouse)
Some muscles, such as a flexed biceps, were thought to look like a little mouse.
Checked against Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and American Heritage Dictionary
Swiss francs use the code CHF; the CH comes from which Latin name for Switzerland?
Answer: Confoederatio Helvetica
A Latin name avoids favoring any one of the country's four national languages.
Checked against Wikipedia and swissinfo.ch
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is named after Charles Dow and which business partner?
Answer: Edward Jones
Dow first published the average in 1896, when it tracked just 12 companies.
Checked against Wikipedia, cityam.com and nbcnews.com
Which famous mystery writer also published romance novels under the pen name Mary Westmacott?
Answer: Agatha Christie
She wrote six novels as Westmacott, the first of them, Giant's Bread, in 1930.
Checked against Wikipedia and agathachristie.com
Lewis Carroll first used which word, the name of a two-part suitcase, for a word blended from two others, like brunch or smog?
Answer: Portmanteau
In Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty compares such words to a portmanteau, a suitcase that opens into two halves.
Checked against Wikipedia and American Heritage Dictionary
Which designer created the original Mini car, launched in Britain in 1959?
Answer: Alec Issigonis
To save space, he mounted the engine sideways and had it drive the front wheels.
Checked against Wikipedia and independent.co.uk