Daily Content Archive

(as of Sunday, August 29, 2021)
Word of the Day

picayune

Definition:(adjective) Of little value or importance; paltry.
Synonyms:fiddling, footling, niggling, piddling, piffling, trivial, petty, lilliputian, little
Usage: Giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction.
Daily Grammar Lesson

Expressing Inequality Using "As … As"

One way of expressing similarities, differences, or changes with comparative adverbs is by using the structure "as … as." We can use that construction to say that two actions are unequal, as long as we add an auxiliary verb and what word to the sentence? More...
Article of the Day

Extremophiles

Extremophiles are microorganisms that thrive in environments with extreme conditions, such as high or low temperatures or pH levels, high salt concentration, or high pressure. Found in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, they produce the vivid colors of some hot springs. Due to extremophiles' ability to thrive in conditions detrimental to most life on Earth, some scientists theorize that they may reflect what life may be like on other planets. How are extremophiles used industrially? More...
This Day in History

Chemical Element Meitnerium Is Synthesized (1982)

In 1982, a German research team led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research created a new element. While bombarding bismuth-209 atoms with iron-58 ions, they detected a single atom of what is now called meitnerium. Its atomic number is 109. The artificially-produced, radioactive element is named for Lise Meitner, the Austrian-Swedish physicist and mathematician who helped discover nuclear fission. When was the name "meitnerium" officially adopted? More...
Today's Birthday

John Locke (1632)

Locke was an English philosopher and founder of British Empiricism. He summed up the Enlightenment in his belief in the middle class and its right to freedom of conscience and right to property, in his faith in science, and in his faith in the goodness of humanity. His influence on philosophy and political theory has been incalculable. His 1690 Two Treatises of Government influenced the American and French revolutions. He once fled to Holland under suspicion of involvement in what plot? More...
Quotation of the Day
She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man.

E. M. Forster (1879-1970)

Idiom of the Day

ride the rail(s)

To travel on a vehicle mounted on rails (especially a train or streetcar). More...
Today's Holiday

Canadian National Exhibition (2023)

The first Canadian National Exhibition was held in 1879 in Toronto. The fair moved briefly to Ottawa, but it returned to Toronto and was called the Toronto Industrial Exhibition until 1921, when the name was changed to reflect its nationwide appeal. Located on the shores of Lake Ontario, about 10 minutes from downtown Toronto, the fairgrounds occupy 350 acres of lawns, gardens, pavilions, and Victorian-style buildings. Events include an air show, a horse show, celebrity appearances, and much more. More...
Word Trivia

Today's topic: wave

comber, breaker, roller - A long curving wave is a comber, a wave that curls over and dissolves into foam is a breaker, and a long wave moving steadily shoreward is a roller. More...

scend - As a noun, it is the surge of a wave or the sea; as a verb, it means to pitch or surge up in a heavy sea. More...

undulate - From Latin unda, "wave." More...

wave - Meaning "movement of the sea," it seems to be an alteration of the earlier wawe, "wave," from Old English woeg, "motion, wave." More...

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