Daily Content Archive
(as of Thursday, September 26, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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undersell
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Defining MitigatorsMitigators, a subset of adverbs of degree, are adverbs or adverbials that modify adjectives and adverbs to reduce their intensity, making them seem less extreme or powerful. "Slightly" is an example of a mitigator. What are some others? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Mud-PuddlingLepidopteran insects like butterflies and moths use diverse strategies to gather liquid nutrients. In addition to sucking nectar from flowers, some butterflies take in water and nutrients such as salts and amino acids from substrates like wet soil, dung, and carrion. In many species, only the males engage in mud-puddling, but they pass nutrients to females during mating, increasing their odds of reproductive success. Some butterflies draw nutrients from blood, tears, and what other substances? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 The Parthenon Is Partially Destroyed by an Explosion (1687)Built in the 5th century BCE on the Acropolis of Athens, the Parthenon was the chief temple of Athena in ancient Greece and the finest example of Doric architecture. In 1687, during the Venetian attack on Athens, the Turks used it for storing gunpowder. The stores were ignited during the bombardment, causing an explosion that partly destroyed the building. Still, its basic structure remains intact and reconstruction efforts are underway. Where is there a full-scale replica of the Parthenon? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Lewis Hine (1874)Hine was an American photographer whose career began shortly after he bought his first camera in 1903. Devoted to capturing images of the dark side of the industrial revolution in the US, he documented the poverty of immigrants and the plight of child laborers. The power of his images placed him at the forefront of 20th-century documentary photographers and helped bring about the passage of child labor laws. Some of his most famous images document the construction of what iconic skyscraper? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 When a subject is highly controversial...one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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can't be bothered— Unwilling or disinclined to make the effort necessary to do or accomplish something. (Used in the present and past tenses almost interchangeably.) More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Birthday of Appleseed (2019)John Chapman—better known as Johnny Appleseed for his lifelong dedication to planting apple seedlings all over the American Midwest—was born on this day in 1774. While some frontier settlers thought he was a saint, or at the very least a religious fanatic, with his tin pot hat and coffee-sack tunic, the Native Americans regarded him as a great medicine man since he planted herbs as well as apples. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: hoghog - A pig weighing more than 120 pounds. More... high on the hog - An allusion to the upper portions of a pig being the best for eating. More... swine, hog, pig - Swine is the collective (and ancestral) term for domesticated pigs and hogs; a hog is 120 pounds or more and ready for market, while a pig is immature and weighs less. More... hog on ice - Known mainly from the title of the book by Charles Earle Funk (1948); it is from the expression "as independent as a hog on ice," in which hog refers to the stone in the game of curling when it comes to rest. More... | |