Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, August 14, 2021)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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supercilious
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Forming Collective AdjectivesCollective adjectives are a subgroup of nominal adjectives, or adjectives that act as nouns. They are used to refer to a group of people based on a characteristic that they share. What article is usually added before the adjective? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 OasesAn oasis is a fertile area of desert land that forms when groundwater lies close enough to the surface to form a spring or to be reached by wells, providing it with a permanent supply of fresh water. Oases vary in size from a pond with a group of date palms to the oasis cities of the deserts of Arabia. Because oases allow travelers, most importantly traders, to replenish their food and water supplies, they are of great strategic and economic value. What Nordic country has a so-called oasis? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 British Troops Are Deployed in Northern Ireland (1969)In August 1969, tensions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland came to a head in the predominantly-Catholic Bogside neighborhood of Londonderry. For days, fighting raged with Catholic residents on one side and police and Protestant residents on the other. On August 14, British troops were deployed to restore order. Some consider that day to be the definitive beginning of the decades-long conflict known as The Troubles. How did residents react to the arrival of the army? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Hans Christian Ørsted (1777)Ørsted was a Danish physicist and chemist. In 1820, he discovered that electric current passing through a wire can deflect a nearby compass needle, a phenomenon that inspired the development of electromagnetic theory. His 1820 discovery of piperine, one of the pungent components of pepper, was an important contribution to chemistry. In 1824, he founded a society devoted to the spread of scientific knowledge among the general public. What unit of measurement was named after him? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or "in his habit as he lived." To believe in him, then, is to believe that not only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile fabrics.Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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say again— Could you please repeat what you just said? More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Torta dei Fieschi (2025)When Count Fieschi of Lavagna in Genoa, Italy, was married in 1240, he invited his guests—and everyone else in town—to share a cake that was more than 30 feet high. The citizens of Lavagna haven't forgotten his generosity, and each year they celebrate the event on August 14. Dressed in costumes, they parade to the town square, where they pin to their clothes a piece of paper (blue for men, white for women) on which a word is written. When they find someone wearing the same word, the couple is given a piece of "Fieschi's cake." More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: scentbreath - From an Old English word meaning "scent, smell." More... flair - Comes from Latin fragrare, "smell sweet," and was first the ability to detect the "essence" or "scent" of something and know how to act accordingly. More... red herring - Something intended to be misleading or distracting, so named from the practice of using the scent of red herring in training hounds. More... relish - First meant "odor, scent," then "taste, flavor." More... | |