Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, March 4, 2022)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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captious
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Constructing Conditional VerbsConditional verbs are constructions of verbs that are used in conditional sentences. Such verbs are typically formed when a clause in the sentence contains the word "if," and the action of the sentence depends on the condition established by this clause. What type of verb is often used to help indicate the tense and intention of the verbs in the conditional or resulting clause(s)? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Geisha: "Art Person"A geisha is a traditional Japanese artist-entertainer skilled at conversation, singing, and dancing. The geisha system likely originated in the 17th century to provide a class of well-trained entertainers separate from courtesans and prostitutes. Even though geisha are usually women, the first ones were actually men. The numbers of geisha have declined from some 80,000 in the 1920s to a few thousand today. Why did geisha often paint their teeth black as part of their formal make-up? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Murder, Inc., Mobster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter Is Executed (1944)In the early 1930s, American gangster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter joined "Lucky" Luciano in forming a national crime syndicate. Buchalter came to control the enforcement arm of the Syndicate—Murder, Inc.—which carried out contract killings across the US. He went into hiding during a government crackdown on organized crime in the mid-1930s but eventually surrendered himself, stood trial for various crimes, and was sentenced to die. Which of his associates were executed on the same day as he was? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (1877)Born into poverty and having had little formal education, Morgan nevertheless became a successful inventor and entrepreneur. In 1914, he patented his "breathing device," a hood that allows one to breathe safely in the presence of smoke, gas, and other pollutants. He worked hard to market it, especially to fire departments, and often demonstrated its reliability, most famously using it to rescue several men from an Ohio tunnel accident in 1916. What did he invent after he had gone nearly blind? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the 'race is for the strong' and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.Charles Darwin (1809-1882) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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put the hammer down— To press down the accelerator (of an automobile) as far as possible; to accelerate to or travel at an automobile's maximum speed. Primarily heard in US. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Bahrain Spring of Culture (2022)In recent decades, the government organizations of Bahrain have worked toward making its national arts program as robust as its oil industry. The Spring of Culture Festival, held every March in the capital city of Manama, helps fulfill this cultural mission and promotes tourism to the country. Thanks to its reputation as a meeting place between the East and the West, Spring of Culture is able to attract performers from all over the world. National, regional, and international artists converge on Manama to perform poetry readings, music, theater, and dance. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: tossfungo - A baseball drill in which a batter tosses a ball in the air and hits it as it descends, probably from Scottish fung, "to pitch, toss, fling." More... jactitating, jactitation, jactation - If you toss and turn at night, you are jactitating; jactitation or jactation is restless tossing or twitching. More... saute - A form of French sauter, it means "to leap or cause to toss." More... walk - First meant "roll," "toss," or "move about; go"—from Old English wealcan, "to roll." More... | |