quest

Etymology 1

From Middle English quest, queste; partly from Anglo-Norman queste, Old French queste (“acquisition, search, hunt”), and partly from their source, Latin quaesta (“tribute, tax, inquiry, search”), noun use of quaesita, the feminine past participle of quaerere (“to ask, seek”).

noun

1. A journey or effort in pursuit of a goal (often lengthy, ambitious, or fervent); a mission.
   In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.” His quest leads him around the world to study a variety of suspect zoonoses—animal-hosted pathogens that infect humans. 2013-01, Katie L. Burke, “Ecological Dependency”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, archived from the original on 2017-02-09, page 64
2. The act of seeking, or looking after anything; attempt to find or obtain; search; pursuit.
   to rove in quest of game, of a lost child, of property, etc.
3. (obsolete) Request; desire; solicitation.
4. (obsolete) A group of people making search or inquiry.
5. (obsolete) Inquest; jury of inquest.

verb

1. (intransitive) To seek or pursue a goal; to undertake a mission or job.
2. (transitive) To search for something; to seek.
   Next day we quested in search of our caravan, and after some pains recovered it. 1634, Thomas Herbert, Description of the Persian Monarchy now beinge the Orientall Indyes, Iles and other ports of the Greater Asia and Africk
3. (entomology, of a tick) To locate and attach to a host animal.

Etymology 2

Blend of quiz + test, to avoid using the word test.

noun

1. (education) A short test.
   I had a calculus quest (not a quiz or a test, but somewhere in between...) it was on limits, and l'hopital's rule... 20 Mar 1998, bill kao, “3rd per”, in alt.music.ash (Usenet)
   However took a quest, quiz/test combination that this math progrm uses, and got ten out of ten on it! 24 Sept 2004, Kathy, “Weekly Diary Third Semester #4”, in alt.coffee.clutch (Usenet)
   Quests, bigger than quizzes and smaller than tests, consist of around 10 questions worth 2 points each, designed to take about 30–40 minutes. 2015, Kathleen Gibson-Dee, “Learning Through Questing, Not Testing”, in College Teaching, volume 63, number 3, Taylor & Francis, →ISSN, page 133
   Most outcomes were assessed with 10 min, single-page, five-question quizzes/tests (“quests”) given at the beginning of class, followed immediately with a brief discussion of the correct answers; mastery could be demonstrated by the student with four of five complete, correct answers (with no partial credit). […] Students were given a finite number of “quest” retakes. Three class periods during the semester were used as quest makeup periods, during which students would be able to take new versions of EO and GO quests. 2017, Joshua Ring, “ConfChem conference on select 2016 BCCE presentations”, in Journal of Chemical Education, volume 94, number 12, ACS Publications, →ISSN, pages 2005–2006