Amazon Quiz: Which early 18th century poet coined the name of this weight?

Joseph Addison

Jonathan Swift

Oliver Goldsmith

Mary Wortley Montagu

Answer: Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison, the 18th century British poet, coined the name of the weight shown in the picture — the dumbbell. Addison first mentioned exercising with a dumbbell in an essay published in The Spectator. 

The dumbbell is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an “apparatus similar to that used to ring a church bell, but without the bell, so noiseless or ‘dumb'”. 

Exercise instruments akin to the dumbbell have been used since Ancient Greece as lifting weights and also as weights in the Ancient Greek version of the long jump. A kind of dumbbell has also been in use in India for over a millennium. This is more akin to what is referred to in the English-speaking world as the club. 

A similar instrument is the meel. Meels have been used by wrestlers in ancient Persia, Egypt and the Middle East. The practice has continued to the present day, especially in the Varzesh-e Bastan tradition. 

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