Daily Content Archive
(as of Monday, August 1, 2022)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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legate
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Comparative Adverbs from Adverbs Ending in "-ly"Many adverbs are formed by adding "-ly" to the end of an adjective. If an adverb has been created according to this pattern, what do we do to form the comparative? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Isadora DuncanDuncan was a pioneer of modern dance. Though born in the US, she was never very popular there. It was in Europe where she achieved great acclaim. An innovator and liberator of expressive movement, Duncan rejected the conventions of classical ballet and gave lecture-demonstrations of what she called "the dance of the future." Inspired by the drama of ancient Greece, she danced barefoot while wearing revealing Greek tunics and flowing scarves. How did her fondness for scarves lead to her death? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 The Nanchang Uprising (1927)Considered the birthplace of the People's Liberation Army, the city of Nanchang in the Jiangxi Province of southeastern China was the site of the first revolutionary activities of the Chinese Communist Party in 1927. During the uprising, a force of 30,000 Communist troops rose against the Kuomintang government and briefly established the first soviet republic in China. However, the government soon retook the city, and it became the regular Nationalist capital in 1928. Who led the uprising? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Francis Scott Key (1779)After the burning of Washington, DC, by the British in the War of 1812, Key, an American lawyer, was sent to secure the release of a friend from a British ship in Chesapeake Bay. That night, while temporarily detained on a British vessel, Key witnessed the British shelling of Fort McHenry. When he saw the American flag still flying the next morning, he was inspired to write "Defense of Fort M'Henry," a poem that was adopted as the US national anthem in 1931. To what melody was the poem set? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 It is easier to get into the enemy's toils than out again.Aesop (620 BC-560 BC) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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grill (someone) (about something)— To question or interrogate someone intensely and relentlessly (about something). More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Lammas (2023)Possibly one of the four great pagan festivals of Britain, Lammas was known as the Gule of August in the Middle Ages. In medieval England, loaves made from the first ripe grain were blessed in the church on this day—the word lammas being a short form of "loaf mass." Lammas Day is similar in original intent to the Jewish Feast of Weeks, also called Shavuot or Pentecost, which came at the end of the Passover grain harvest. A 15th-century suggestion was that the name derived from "lamb" and "mass," and was the time when a feudal tribute of lambs was paid. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: pleasantamicable, amiable - Amicable implies being well disposed; amiable is acting well disposed and is commonly applied only to people—though sometimes it is used for occasions, while amicable is not applied to people at all but to human interactions and their outcomes. Amiable first meant "kind" or "lovely, lovable," and amicable first applied to things and meant "pleasant, benign." More... jolly - Comes from Old French jolif, "merry, festive, pleasant." More... merry - First meant "peaceful" or "pleasant," which is what it first meant in "Merry Christmas." More... | |