Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, July 12, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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neologism
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Compound NounsA compound noun consists of two or more words (usually two nouns or an adjective and a noun) functioning as a single unit to name a person, place, or thing. What are the three written forms of compound nouns? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 ImhotepImhotep was an Egyptian polymath who lived in the 27th century BCE and served as chief minister to the Egyptian king Djoser. He is remembered as a skilled physician, sage, and astrologer, as well as the architect of the step-pyramid at Saqqara, the first pyramid ever constructed. He was deified around the time of the Persian conquest in 525 BCE, and his cult reached its zenith in Greco-Roman times, when he was linked to Asclepius. He may have been the first to use what structure in architecture? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 King Henry VIII of England Marries Sixth and Last Wife, Catherine Parr (1543)By 1543, Henry VIII had had five marriages, which respectively ended in one divorce, one annulment, and three deaths—two by beheading. He then married Parr, his sixth and final wife. She had a good influence on the increasingly paranoid king—her third husband—and developed close friendships with his children, even acting as guardian of one of Henry's daughters after his death in 1547. Why, then, did Parr send her beloved stepdaughter, the future Queen Elizabeth I, away the next year? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Oscar Hammerstein II (1895)The grandson of an opera impresario of the same name, Hammerstein studied law before beginning the theater career that made him one of the foremost songwriters in the US. In the early 1940s, he began a prolific and successful collaboration with Richard Rodgers that resulted in plays like The King and I, The Sound of Music, and the Pulitzer Prize winners Oklahoma! and South Pacific. The eight-time Tony Award winner is also the only person named Oscar to have done what? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.Jane Austen (1775-1817) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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honest to Pete— Honestly; truly; genuinely. An expression used to emphasize the veracity of one's statement, "Pete" here is a substitution of the word "God," so as to avoid potential blasphemy. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Douai Festival of the Giants (Fête des Géants) (2020)For three days and nights during the Fête des Géants in Douai, France, the figure of Gayant is carried through the streets to the accompaniment of drums and church bells. About 25 feet tall and wearing a military uniform, Gayant is followed by his wife, Marie, and then their three children. The giants go to the town hall to salute the mayor, after which they continue on to the Place D'Armes and take part in the festivities. Another famous procession of the giants takes place in the city of Lille on Whit Monday, when more than 100 of these fabulous figures are carried through the streets of the town. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: understoodtranspicuous - Describing something easily seen through or understood. More... passive vocabulary - Contains lexemes we know and understand but do no actively use (in writing or speech). More... scrutable - Describing that which can be understood through scrutiny. More... esoteric - Its root sense is "for the initiates of a religious mystery," and it means "confined to or understood by just a few people." More... | |