Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, September 13, 2020)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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perjury
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Adjective PhrasesAn adjective phrase is an adjective and any additional information linked to it that work together to describe a noun or pronoun in a sentence. How does an adjective phrase differ from an adjectival phrase? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Alexander ChavchavadzeBorn in 1786, Chavchavadze was a Georgian poet, military leader, and aristocrat who was an immensely influential figure in Georgian literature. Despite his military service to the Russian empire, Chavchavadze was a Georgian nationalist who wrote nostalgic poems about his homeland. He supported an 1832 plot aimed at organizing an uprising against the Russian authority in Georgia. When it failed, he was exiled, but he was later pardoned. What unfortunate accident brought about his untimely demise? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 UN General Assembly Adopts Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007)Over two decades in the making, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was finally adopted in 2007 despite opposition from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US. The non-binding declaration prohibits discrimination against the world's estimated 370 million indigenous people and outlines their rights, among them the rights to culture, identity, language, employment, and education. What were some of the key issues that delayed the drafting and adoption of the declaration? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Judith Martin: "Miss Manners" (1938)Martin is an American journalist, novelist, and etiquette authority. Since 1978, she has written an advice column that is distributed three times a week by Universal Uclick and carried in more than 200 newspapers worldwide. Using the pseudonym Miss Manners, she answers etiquette questions contributed by her readers and clarifies the essential qualities of politeness using what she calls "heavy etiquette theory." What has Miss Manners identified as a top etiquette problem in America nowadays? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.Henry Fielding (1707-1754) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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brace of shakes— Instantly, quickly, or in an extremely short amount of time, as of a task or event. "Brace," taken from the old French for the arms' breadth from hand to hand, means twice; the phrase as a whole refers either to an old nautical term, meaning the time it takes the sail to shake twice as it takes up the wind, or else the short time it takes to shake a dice-box twice. Often used in the phrase "in a brace of shakes." More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon Night Show (2022)The Pendleton Round-Up is one of the best-known rodeos in the West, held since 1910 in the small ranch town of Pendleton, Oregon. Happy Canyon was inaugurated four years later and evolved into the present-day Happy Canyon Pageant, a presentation by Northwest Indian tribes that features a teepee encampment and ceremonial dancing. In between, the rodeo features the standard competitions—bronco riding, bull riding, steer wrestling, and calf and steer roping. Additionally, there are wild horse and stagecoach races and wild-cow milking. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: occupationaptronym - A name that fits a person's nature or occupation, like Jane House for a real estate agent. More... mechanical - Predates "machine" in English and has long had certain separate senses, such as "an art, trade, or occupation: concerned with manual work" and "practical as opposed to theoretical." More... specialization, specialty - Specialization refers to the process of becoming specialized; specialty refers to a special pursuit, occupation, or product. More... study - Based on Latin studium, "painstaking application, zeal" (from studere, "to be zealous"), study's earliest uses are surprising: "affection, friendliness," an "occupation or pursuit," and "a state of reverie or abstraction; state of perplexity." More... | |