Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, December 27, 2020)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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palliate
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Idioms that Start with PrepositionsMost idioms that start with prepositions are prepositional phrases and consist of a preposition followed by a noun or noun phrase. What are the most common prepositions found at the beginning of prepositional idioms? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Reduviidae, AKA Assassin BugsThousands of species of the aptly named assassin bug crawl the Earth. Most prey on other insects, using a segmented beak to suck out victims' body fluids, and some species even kill bedbugs and roaches. Still, not all are beneficial. There are species that drink blood and prey on vertebrates, and one is even known to bite the eyes of sleeping humans. Another defends itself by spitting toxic saliva that causes blindness. Some produce pain-inducing venom, and others carry what often-fatal disease? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Radio City Music Hall Opens in New York City (1932)Developed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Radio Corporation of America, and the creator of the Roxy Theatre, New York's landmark Radio City Music Hall opened with a lavish variety show that was not well received. Instead, the world's largest indoor theater began showing movies with accompanying stage spectacles. Recently, it has focused on concerts and live events such as the Grammy Awards. Its annual Christmas show remains a popular tourist attraction. What was the first film shown there? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Jakob Bernoulli (1654)Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician who, with his brother Johann, pioneered German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz's calculus. The first to use the word "integral" in solving Leibniz's problem of the isochronous curve, Jakob used calculus to study the forms of many curves arising in practical situations. In 1713, he wrote Ars Conjectandi, or The Art of Conjecture, an important treatise on the theory of probability that contained the Bernoulli numbers, which are what? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.Charles Dickens (1812-1870) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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hold the ring— To monitor or control a conflict or dispute, especially in a neutral or uninvolved manner. Primarily heard in UK. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Second Night of Kwanzaa (2023)Kwanzaa is an African-American celebration of family and black culture. Each day is dedicated to one of seven principles: umoja (unity), kujichagulia (self-determination), ujima (collective work and responsibility), ujamaa (cooperative economics), nia (purpose), kuumba (creativity), and imani (faith). Families gather in the evenings to discuss the principle of the day, and then light a black, red, or green candle and place it in a candleholder called a kinara. On the evening of Dec. 31, families join for a feast called the karamu. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: scentbreath - From an Old English word meaning "scent, smell." More... flair - Comes from Latin fragrare, "smell sweet," and was first the ability to detect the "essence" or "scent" of something and know how to act accordingly. More... red herring - Something intended to be misleading or distracting, so named from the practice of using the scent of red herring in training hounds. More... relish - First meant "odor, scent," then "taste, flavor." More... | |