Excerpt: The Saga of Proper Names / The Story of English - Mario Pei

This quote was added by jfrkuang
Baugh claims that there are in English over five hundred common nouns derived from proper ones. This is probably an understatement, when we consider the vast number of place-names, personal names and nicknames that appear today as names of objects. A few of the better known ones are macadam, derrick, hansom, shrapnel, silhouette, lynch, boycott, pasteurize, mercerize, mesmerize, fletcherize, spoonerism, pander, lilliputian, tabasco, and Charleston...

Train on this quote


Rate this quote:
2.7 out of 5 based on 6 ratings.

Edit Text

Edit author and title

(Changes are manually reviewed)

or just leave a comment:


Test your skills, take the Typing Test.

Score (WPM) distribution for this quote. More.

Best scores for this typing test

Name WPM Accuracy
2001or2 101.89 86.5%
staylor1014 96.60 96.0%
strikeemblem 93.29 96.2%
jawtry 89.37 93.8%
lubokkanev 88.28 98.3%
digitalis 85.90 96.8%
capitan11 84.07 91.2%
maliiii 82.21 95.2%
historialdirect 80.84 95.8%
jl.jielin 77.42 94.2%

Recently for

Name WPM Accuracy
sheilafleming 66.76 96.8%
user507137 63.76 95.4%
jl.jielin 77.42 94.2%
user105219 69.87 97.2%
taytaytay 67.87 96.8%
historialdirect 80.84 95.8%
user90997 74.58 89.4%
lwaller145 64.21 95.2%