Stars! A Word Puzzle

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett, and we’re joined by game show writer, comedian, and our quiz guy, John Chanesky. Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. Thank you guys for following me on all the things I do. You’re so sweet.

I have a really interesting quiz today, I think. You know, it always annoys me when people talk about astrology, because astrology is just limited to 12 constellations, and astronomy has so much more and more interesting constellations in the night sky. There are 88 of them in total, and this very quiz quiz will test what you know about some of them. Let’s start with animals. If you know adjectives that describe certain animals, you’ll probably get these easily.

Here’s the first one. The constellation Aquila sounds like it has something to do with water. It does not. We have Aquarius for that. Its name is the Latin name for a bird, and a person with an aquiline nose maybe resembles this bird a bit, a very noble and beautiful bird?

Oh, yeah.

So that’s eagle.

And I know that one because of the Spanish-language name aguila or aguilar, which is a common last name. And so if you have an aquiline nose, you have a bird-like nose.

It looks like the beak of an eagle.

Yeah, very good.

No way to cross-reference.

Nicely done.

Here’s the next one.

The constellation Columba has nothing to do with Christopher Columbus, except its relation to his name. Now, Columbus is a Latinized version of Columbo, which was a name given to orphans. Perhaps they thought poor orphan children were like the birds this word represents.

I did not know that, but yeah.

Right.

But if you know the adjective Columbine, you know what this pretty white bird is.

What is it?

Sure, it’s a dove.

And the flower Columbine looks like little doves all tur-turing together. If you look at the blossom, it looks like a bunch of little doves together.

Excellent.

How pretty.

Here’s the last animal.

Monoceros.

M-O-N-O-C-E-R-O-S.

Monoceros.

It may remind you of rhinoceros, which gets its name from the Greek for nose and horn. Well, the horn part fits monoceros, and you surely know what the prefix mono means. So what fictional animal does monoceros represent?

Well, the Latinized version of that, I guess, would be a unicorn, eh?

Yes, exactly.

There’s a unicorn in the sky. Like I said, next time someone asks you your sign, tell them you’re a monoceros. You’re a unicorn.

Now, we’ve spent more than a year talking about corona. And jokes about beer aside, the word coronation is a clue to the Latin meaning of corona. So the constellations corona australis and corona borealis are the southern australis and northern borealis versions of what item?

The crown.

That would be a crown.

The crown, yes. There’s a southern crown and a northern crown.

Very good.

And a little crown on a bottle of Corona beer.

And coronary arteries form a little crown around the heart.

There you go.

There’s those connections I was talking about right there.

Very good.

Thanks, guys.

You did this quiz very well.

Thank you.

We crown you the king of quizzes.

Thanks, John.

Hooray.

Well, we’d love to talk with you about language, so call us, 877-929-9673, or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter at Wayword.