The Hindu Business Line : First tests could have occurred in discarded skulls doubling as cups

MORE than one `test' is in the air. "Damp start to the Mumbai Test," is a headline from CricInfo.com, the UK, while Boston Globe reports of Tyler Hamilton's cycling team challenging the method of a drug test. "India test fires BrahMos missile from ship," alerts People's Daily Online, China. And on DetNews.com, "2 hours ago" is a story about how in the US e-voting has passed the biggest test, though computer scientists remain sceptical. Rain or no rain, we may never come to terms with our team's performance at the recent cricket Tests, but the word "test" is a different game.

"The words test and testing have many meanings," cautions Wikipedia. For instance, `test' in education is `summative testing', for measuring "students' performance, knowledge or skills". A formative test, on the other hand, is "designed to aid learning by diagnosing students' knowledge and skills thereby permitting a suitable learning programme to be created"; formative tests maybe something most of us would be happy with.

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage deals with `test' too briefly as a synonym of `sign' with an example: "Calamity is the true test of friendship." Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as "a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something." It is `a short examination' that our professors used to make us sit through in class to expose our deep ignorance.

There are online evaluations too where you can experience the ordeal minus exam hall ambience. For those who find pregnancy tests too edge-of-the-seat to endure, www.epigee.org offers an online version that takes as inputs "your natural menstrual cycle and date of intercourse to plot a mathematical calculation." Chemists use the word test to mean a procedure aimed at identifying if a substance is present or absent, as in the case of dope in urine. Test is also `a difficult situation' that reveals the strength or quality of... shall we say, our batsmen and bowlers?

Interestingly, origin of this 14th century word is via Old French `pot,' from Latin testum, meaning `earthenware pot,' explains Encarta. "The main modern meaning evolved from `pot in which metals are heated' via `examination of properties or qualities.'" Testum is related to testa, `piece of burned clay, earthen pot, shell,' and textere `to weave,' adds www.etymonline.com. Testa is a botanical word to mean the protective outer covering of a seed; but ironically, it is in tests that we get exposed. Queer, but Latin testa also means skull, and is the origin for Middle English testif, meaning `headstrong', and also the present testy, making you `easily irritated'. To illustrate, a meek follow-on by the host team is bound to make interested spectators of Test matches terribly testy, if not testing their patriotism. Cannibals might have found skulls tasty too, but the word taste is from Old French taster, meaning touch.

More queerly, an entry in the Online Etymology Dictionary plugs testa in cup. Cup is from PIE keup, `a hollow', it informs, and adds that the German cognate Kopf now means exclusively `head'. Kapal is Sanskrit for skull. Perhaps, the original cups were skulls!

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus would ask Cassius, "Must I stand and crouch under your testy humour?" A line in A Midsummer Night's Dream is about leading `testy rivals so astray'. Gloucester speaks of `testy gentleman so hot' in King Richard III, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, describes romantically, "Sorrow were ever razed and testy wrath could never be her mild companion." A comment of Menenius in Coriolanus can invite contempt: "Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome." In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julia frets, "How wayward is this foolish love that, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse and presently all humbled kiss the rod!" Quite philosophically, the Bard writes in a sonnet, "As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, no news but health from their physicians know."

There are more of detest than test, and more of superlatives that end with `test' than testy, in Shakespeare's works. Among the few is one in Hamlet. "My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, and makes as healthful music: it is not madness that I have utter'd: bring me to the test," says Hamlet to Queen Gertrude who thinks that the prince is yielding to ecstasy, a `coinage' of his brain. Prospero says, "Thou hast strangely stood the test here, afore Heaven," in The Tempest. A line of Isabella in Measure For Measure reads, "Not with fond shekels of the tested gold." Elsewhere in the same play, Angelo requests, "Now, good my lord, let there be some more test made of my metal, before so noble and so great a figure be stamp'd upon it." Faced with Brabantio's charge against Othello, Duke of Venice declares, "To vouch this, is no proof, without more wider and more overt test." Soon enough, Desdemona would testify: "My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty... I am hitherto your daughter: but here's my husband."

To put in classes is classify, to make specific is specify, and to add humidity is humidify. Not so with testify, because this word means to give evidence as a witness in a court of law, and originates not from the same earthen pot, but Latin testis, meaning `a witness'. An origin that is also shared by testament, testate, testicle, and testimony. Detest, is not the opposite of test, as in the case of demystify or decommission, but means dislike intensely, from Latin testis, again.

Acid test is the ultimate trial for someone's credibility, and a ratio named thus is used by financial analysts to check a firm's liquidity. Test Act is not a statute on tests but a 17th century English law that barred from public office anyone who would not take Anglican Communion or renounce transubstantiation. "It was intended to prevent Catholics from occupying civil or military posts, and was repealed in 1828," explains Encarta.

The anti-cricket lobby may clamour for a ban on tests and ODIs, but test ban is an embargo on nuclear experimenting. Tests screen candidates, but test-screening is what is akin to preview, where a provisional version of a movie is shown to gauge audience reaction. There are other `test' phrases too, such as test bed to mean area for machinery testing; test data that auditors use in computer environments to check the systems; test drive is how dealers entice prospective buyers of cars; test case is an important litigation that can become a precedent; test marketing helps companies get a feel of the demand and thus `test the waters' before a full-scale launch; test paper is not exam question sheet but a chemically treated strip that helps in testing, such as what diabetics use; test pattern is a geometric pattern used by TV broadcasters to help in TV tuning; and test tube is where most births may take place in future.

For P.G. Wodehouse, golf is the `infallible test' to find the right man. How? "The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only god is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well." Not our test cricketers?

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

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