Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, May 22, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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obtrude
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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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 The Michelin GuideThe Michelin Guide (Le Guide Michelin) is a series of guide books to over a dozen countries published annually by the Michelin company. André Michelin published the first edition of the guide in 1900 to help drivers maintain their cars, find decent lodging, and eat well while touring France. Today, the Michelin Red Guide is the oldest and best-known European hotel and restaurant guide. International food critics have accused the guide of what type of bias? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Pac-Man Arcade Game Released (1980)First released in Japan in 1980, Pac-Man went on to become one of the most famous arcade games of all time. Developed by Namco video game designer Toru Iwatani, the game became an icon of 80s pop culture and is often credited with being a landmark in video game history. For the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man in 2010, Google turned its homepage logo into a fully playable version of the game. How much productivity did businesses reportedly lose from employees playing the game? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Richard Wagner (1813)Wagner was a German composer whose astonishing works made him one of the most influential figures in the history of Western music. He revolutionized the 19th-century idea of opera, seeing it as a wholly new art form in which musical, poetic, and scenic elements should come together through such devices as the leitmotif—a recurring melodic phrase used to illustrate a character or idea. His operas include Tristan and Isolde, as well as his masterpiece, a four-opera cycle known as what? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.Jane Austen (1775-1817) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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a shiver down (one's) spine— A shudder felt down one's back, due to either fear, anticipation, nervousness, or excitement. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Fiesta of Santa Rita (2015)Villagers in Apastepeque, San Vicente Department, El Salvador, celebrate Santa Rita's feast day with a dance-drama called the Dance of the Tunco de Monte, or Wild Pig, an Indian dance going back to pre-Christian times. One person dresses in pig skins and pretends to be a pig, while other dancers portray various other stock characters. They enact the chasing and, finally, killing of the pig. At the concluding "feast," the hunter who has caught the pig alternates between praying to Santa Rita for the welfare of the village and cracking jokes. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: squeezeanguish, anxious, anxiety - Anguish, anxious, and anxiety come from Latin angere, "to choke, squeeze, strangle." More... kvetch - To complain chronically or habitually, from Yiddish kvetshn, "pinch, squeeze; complain." More... squash - As a verb, it is an alteration of quash, and means, generally, to "crush, squeeze, or suppress." More... tapioca - Comes from Tupi-Guarani tipi, "residue," and ok/og, "squeeze out." More... | |