Daily Content Archive
(as of Monday, August 28, 2017)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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acerbic
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Defining AdjunctsAdjuncts are parts of a sentence that are used to elaborate on or modify other words or phrases in a sentence. Along with subjects, verbs, objects, and complements, adjuncts are one of the five main components of the structure of clauses. What is a distinguishing feature of adjuncts? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Et in Arcadia Ego: I Am Also in Arcadia"Et in Arcadia Ego" is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two highly influential 17th-century paintings depicting shepherds from classical antiquity gathered around an austere tomb. The phrase is usually interpreted as "I am also in Arcadia," and its purpose is to set up an ironic contrast between mortality and idle merriment. Recently, however, the phrase has been used in conspiracy theories and interpreted to mean what? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Caleb Davis Bradham Begins Selling "Pepsi-Cola" (1898)Bradham was a pharmacist who invented a soft drink made with kola nut extract, vanilla, and "rare oils." He believed his drink aided digestion and renamed it "Pepsi-Cola" after the kola nut and pepsin, an enzyme that aids in digestion. In 1902, he incorporated the Pepsi-Cola Co, and, in 1931, the trademark and assets were bought by Charles Guth, who improved the formula and marketed a 12-ounce bottle for five cents with huge success. What did Bradham originally call his drink? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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.jpg) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749)Goethe was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist whose dramatic poem Faust is considered one of the world's greatest poetic and philosophic creations. In it, he represents Faust, the legendary scholar who sold his soul to the devil, tragically, as a singularly modern figure who is condemned to remain unsatisfied by life. In his later years, Goethe was celebrated as a sage and visited by world luminaries. Which of Goethe's novels is often called the first bildungsroman? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we would.Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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the bigger they come, the harder they fall— Those who are exceptionally large, powerful, or influential will have more to lose when they fail, and their failure will be all the more dramatic or spectacular because of it. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo (2017)St. Augustine is best known for his spiritual autobiography, the Confessions, which details the excesses of his youth, his career as a teacher of rhetoric, his years as a believer in Manicheism and Platonism, and his belated conversion to Christianity. It is primarily for his writings that he is known as the patron saint of theologians and scholars, and one of the "Four Latin Fathers" of the Christian Church. When Spanish soldiers landed on the coast of Florida on St. Augustine's Day in 1565, they named the U.S.'s oldest European community after him. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: hastyhasting, hasty - An early-ripening fruit or vegetable is a hasting and such a food that ripens early is termed "hasty." More... hasty pudding - An ancient dish of flour boiled in water to thick consistency, with milk or beer added afterwards. More... festinate, festination - If something is hasty or hurried, it is festinate, and to festinate is to walk fast, make haste; festination is "haste, speed." More... precipitous, precipitate - Precipitous, "hasty, sudden and dramatic," is used in relation to physical or natural objects; precipitate, "done with great haste," relates to human actions or processes. More... | |