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Remember the question wasn't "when did they acquire their current common usage" it was "when did they enter the language".

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Sorry, fellas, but I disagree.

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What is a Trick Question?

A trick question can be used in a variety of circumstances. These types of questions are often used as a type of joke or within the context of a game. Sometimes people label certain questions as a trick if the person asking the question poses it with the intention of confusing or shedding a bad light onto the responder.

Common characteristics of these types of questions include:

* Answers which may seem initially obvious, but which aren’t actually the correct answers. For example, the first impulse to answer the question What do you put into a toaster? with toast is incorrect. Bread is put into a toaster, and then develops into toast, so the correct answer is bread. Many people answer with toast because it is the first answer which comes to mind, and it seems too obvious to be wrong.

* The question is designed to confuse people. Ask someone how many months of the year have twenty-eight days, and the most likely answer you will receive is one, referring to the month of February. The true answer to this question, however, is all the months, because each month within the year indeed has twenty-eight days, even though there are more than twenty-eight days in the majority of months.

* The correct answer is a fact. When the actual answer to the trick question is revealed, it shouldn’t be debatable.

The basic anatomy of a trick question is this: The answer is already known by the person asking the question, and it’s supposed to confuse the person being asked.

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Complex question, trick question, multiple question or plurium interrogationum (Latin, "of many questions") is a question that has a presupposition that is complex.

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adviser (military) - 1915 (n)

atomic bomb - 1914 (n) 1945 (v)

allergy - 1907 (n)

Alzheimer’s disease - (1911)

bomber (as a terrorist) - 1915, but terrorist or terrorism not specifically mentioned. Terrorist dates from 1795.

chain store - 1910

D-day - 1918

family values - 1916

grass roots -

• a. The fundamental level; the source or origin.Some of the later examples are influenced by sense 2b.
  
  1901    R. Kipling Kim xiv. 371   Not till I came to Shamlegh could I meditate upon the Course of Things, or trace the running grass-roots of Evil.
  
  
•  b. Polit. Used spec. to describe the rank-and-file of the electorate or of a political party. Also attrib. orig. U.S.
  
  1912  McClure's Mag. July 324/1   From the Roosevelt standpoint, especially, it was a campaign from the ‘grass roots up’. The voter was the thing.

homosexual - 1892 (adj) 1912 (n) - Ayto lists homosexual under the decade of the 1910s, apparently because it was first attested as a noun in 1912, but notes that it was attested as an adjective in 1892. Ayto says in both cases the word was translated into English from a German text.

isotope - 1913

motorcade - 1913 (n) 1965 (v)

mushroom (cloud) -

• 1909 An ascending cloud of smoke and debris characteristically taking the shape of a tall column spreading out into a broad flattish top; esp. such a cloud resulting from a nuclear explosion. Also fig.
  
  Cent. Dict. Suppl. Suppl. 840/2 (caption) Mushroom-cloud as seen above Mt. Pelée during its eruption in June, 1902.
  
  
• mushroom - 1916  8. A cloud of smoke, fire, etc., which rises in a column and then rolls outwards into a mushroom shape. Cf. mushroom cloud n.
  
  1916    J. Buchan Greenmantle xxi. 291   There was the dull shock of an explosion and a mushroom of red earth.)

quantum theory - 1911

Red (communist) - 1851 (etymology.com: "Bolshevik" 1909, "radical, communist" 1851; OED says the 1851 meaning of red was "a political radical, as a republican, anarchist, or socialist")

sex symbol - n.  (a) a symbol that represents sex, or (the attributes of) a particular sex (now rare);  (b) a person widely regarded as the epitome of sexual attractiveness and glamour (now the usual sense).

1871    J. H. Jones Kingdom of Heaven 14   It resulted inevitably, therefore, that‥the woman, the *sex-symbol of the spirit, should become the slave of the man, the sex-symbol of the flesh.

a1911    D. G. Phillips Susan Lenox (1917) II. xx. 442   Men‥might regard her as nothing but sex symbol; she regarded herself as an intelligence.

Ayto mentions only the 1911 quote.

white collar -

• 1919 - a. (As two words.) A white collar regarded as characteristic of a man engaged in non-manual work.)
  
• 1930 - b. A person engaged in non-manual work.

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It is 1900. In Britain, Queen Victoria is still on the throne. At the start of the Victorian era, over sixty years before, the railways were a novelty; the only means of taking to the air was the balloon; the voting franchise was still biased towards the landed classes; and the crinoline had not been heard of.

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According to Oxford's A Century of New Words, by John Ayton, all of those terms entered the English vocabulary between 1910 - 1920.

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The question is designed to confuse people.

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The words sounded fairly modern, but I assumed they were older that they appeared. That was the whole purpose of asking the question.

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Adviceopedia.org has the estimated value of $4,027 and ranks # 1,007,221 in the World (Alexa). With the daily ads revenue: $3 and pageviews per day: 147. The website is hosted on server that locates in Seattle WA United States.

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If crinoline had not been heard of by 1900, when did it appear? Ayto never answers this question.

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At the start of the Victorian era, over sixty years before [...] the crinoline had not been heard of.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
I'd think this "Adviceopedia" and "Scholarpedia" would be separate from Wikipedia, right? If so, it's odd that they look so similar to Wikipedia. Are they connected?

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Still, I'd think some of the software would be different

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though I suppose you are right, Z, that they are trying to "cash in" on the name of Wikipedia.

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On the other hand, a more innovative person would develop a new look and a new function (i.e. Facebook versus MySpace) and perhaps overshadow Wikipedia.

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Have you seen Citizendium? That was a project set up by a group of people who were dissatisfied with the Wikipedia model and wanted to improve on it. It certainly has a different look and feel to it.