Questions that raise questions

The Curious Reader 2022 daily calendar, produced by Mental Floss, posed an interesting literally quiz on Aug. 5. Listed were five common words or phrases and five famous writers. Which writer invented which word or phrase?

H.G. Wells

Atomic bomb was the only easy one. It had to be H.G. Wells, who wrote science fiction. He was also the only writer on the list who wrote in the 20th century. You knew Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte never worked an atomic bomb into a novel.

But what about sponge cake? Probably not Herman Melville, but which of the three others? It turns out that was Austen. The calendar, unfortunately, doesn't tells us the source of these terms. Nor does it tell us what Austen meant when she wrote "sponge cake." Was it what the term means now or something different?

Today spring cleaning is a common phrase, though perhaps not as common as it once was. Yet it was Charlotte Bronte who first wrote spring clean. Does this necessarily mean she invented the concept of spring cleaning? Probably not.

You probably associate Melville with whales or ships, not nightlife, yet it was he who put first put the word in a book.

And that leaves Louisa May Alcott with the word co-ed. So how did she use the word? Was she the first to abbreviate co-educational? Or did the abbreviation somehow come first?

Obviously this quiz leaves us with more questions than than we started with.