Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, May 1, 2021)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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peccadillo
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Mitigators vs. IntensifiersMitigators are the opposite of intensifiers, which are used to increase the intensity of the words they modify. "Very" is an example of an intensifier. What are some others? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 CollageDerived from a French word meaning "to glue," collage is an art technique consisting of pasting materials to a surface. Long popular as a pastime for children and amateurs, it was first given serious attention as an art technique in 1912, when Pablo Picasso pasted a section of commercially printed oilcloth to his cubist painting Still Life with Chair Caning. It has been used by countless artists since. What are some examples of musical, literary, and architectural "collages"? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Penny Black Is Issued in the UK (1840)Before the issuance of the Penny Black—the first adhesive stamp to indicate prepayment of postage—letters were commonly paid for by their recipients. Part of an effort to reform the antiquated British postal system, the stamp featured a profile of Queen Victoria. Because its dark background made cancellation marks hard to see and made reusing stamps quite easy, it was soon redesigned. To this day, all British stamps bear a profile of the reigning monarch and are the only stamps not to list what? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852)Considered one of the founders of neuroscience, Ramón y Cajal was a Spanish histologist and Nobel laureate. He devised a method of staining nerve tissue that allowed him to study the structure of the nervous system and make many important discoveries. In 1906, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Camillo Golgi. Though he was a highly respected researcher in his adult years, he often got into trouble as a child and was imprisoned at the age of 11 for doing what? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been.Charles Dickens (1812-1870) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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Up to (one's) neck in alligators— business adage The full expression is some variation of: "When you are up to your neck in alligators, it's easy to forget that the goal was to drain the swamp." It is easy to be so overcome or preoccupied by various tangential worries, problems, or tasks that one loses sight of the ultimate goal or objective. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Vappu (2023)Vappu is a national holiday and celebration of the coming of spring in Finland. This traditional festival is also Labor Day, and factories that are said to "never close" do close on May 1 (and Christmas Day). For students, the "anything goes" celebration begins at midnight on the eve of May Day, called Vapunaatto, when they wear white student caps and indulge in anything not indecent or criminal. There are balloons, streamers, horns, and masks everywhere, and few get much sleep. On May Day itself, the students lead processions through the streets of Helsinki, and then enjoy carnivals and concerts. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: notchcrenelation, crenelle - A crenelation (from Latin crena, "notch") is a series of indentations or loopholes around the top of a castle, battlement, or wall—with each indentation being a crenelle (or crenel). More... carf, kerf - A cut or notch in timber is a carf or kerf—which are also used to describe the width of such a cut. More... dent - As in "notch," it comes from the French word for tooth; its original meaning was "blow, stroke" in general. More... score - First a notch used to keep count, as on a stick. More... | |