Quiz me this, quiz-face.

   So, for this post I was going to be telling the story that I had heard about the origin of the word quiz, which was that in 1791, a Dublin theatre owner called James or Richard Daly created the word as part of a bet that he could introduce a nonsense word into the common English vocabulary. So he took the word quiz, which previously had meant nothing, and paid some street urchins to spread it around, then created an event around it. Which is all quite interesting, and has an Irish interest and all that, EXCEPT, that there is NO known evidence to support this story.

  

 So, setting aside that someone at some stage in history went to the trouble of creating a fake etymology for quiz (perhaps; winning a bet of their own?) , there are a few reasonably interesting other answers.

   Quiz has a recorded use from 1782, meaning an "odd or eccentric person". By the mid 19th century however, it was being used in its current form, (to question or interrogate), with the following explanations suggested. An 1843 reference spells it "She come back an quiesed us". This spelling suggested either that it's a corruption of the Latin "Qui es?" (who are you), or of the English dialect verb quiset, meaning to question.

It is quite likely to be from the same origin as question or inquisitive.