[Cf. QUIZ sb.1]
1. trans. To make sport or fun of (a person or thing), to turn to ridicule; occasionally, to regard with an air of mockery.
1796. Campaigns 1793–4, II. viii. 51. And quiz ev’ry blockhead accounted a boar.
1802. Mar. Edgeworth, Moral T. (1816), I. iv. 19. He spent his time in … ridiculing, or, in his own phrase, quizzing every sensible young man.
1825. C. M. Westmacott, English Spy, I. 231. Quizzing the little daughter of Terpsichore through his eye-glass.
1833. Marryat, P. Simple (1863), 113. Young gentlemen are apt to quiz; and I think that being quizzed hurts my authority with the men.
1874. Green, Short Hist., v. 214. Chaucer … quizzes in the rime of Sir Thopaz the wearisome idleness of the French romance.
absol. 1815. Sporting Mag., XLV. 161. All were sneering at Sam, and they quizz’d and they gaz’d.
1870. Green, Lett., III. (1901), 254. What a charming tongue Latin is for quizzing in.
† 2. intr. To play with a quiz (sb.1 2). Obs.
a. 1800. Moore, in Mem., I. 11. The ladies too, when in the streets,… Went quizzing on, to show their shapes and graceful mien.
