osuche,

It was a vivid example of how rapidly language changes! When I attended Lushoto School, if someone had something he wished to give away, he shouted "Quiz?". The first one to say “Echo” could have it.

As an aside, since these transactions were between boarding school boys, this could lead to somewhat undesirable items “Quiz-ed”.

OK, in and of itself a quaint custom. Many years later, my brother mentioned in passing that he was reading a novel by Somerset Maugham (perhaps not), and in it there is a scene set in Oxford where one of the students held up his clenched fist, announced ‘Quis?’, and another said ‘Ego’.

It was only then that I recognized that I and the other students at had been obliviously chanting a corrupt Latin! I have been sold on the plastic and mutable nature of natural languages ever since.

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Eudaimonia