Today's Highlights
| Word of the Day | |||||||
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tongue-in-cheek
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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ConjugationConjugation refers to the way we inflect (change the form of) verbs to create particular meanings. What is grammatical tense? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Parietal EyesLizards, frogs, lampreys, and some fish species possess a unique organ known as a third, or parietal, eye. Though referred to as an "eye," this photoreceptive organ does not "see" in the same way that a standard eye does. Instead, it uses a different biochemical method of detecting light than normal eyes and helps regulate circadian rhythms and hormone production for thermoregulation. The parietal eye is associated with what gland that humans, too, possess? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Champion Race Horse Abducted, Never to be Seen Again (1983)Two years after his record-setting win at the Epsom Derby, the acclaimed Irish racehorse Shergar was loaded into a trailer at gunpoint and abducted by a gang of masked men. At that time, the retired 1981 "European Horse of the Year" commanded a stud fee upwards of £50,000 and was thus extremely valuable. The horse's owners refused to pay the demanded ransom, and police were unable to find him. Shergar was never seen again. Who may have taken him, and what is believed to have been his fate? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876)Modersohn-Becker was a German painter who became an important early Expressionist despite her tragically short career. After studying in London and Paris, she helped introduce French Post-Impressionism into German art. She was greatly influenced by her stay at the artists' colony of Worpswede and later shifted from painting landscapes to portraits and still lifes, focusing on the expression of her feelings rather than a portrayal of reality. She died suddenly at 31, shortly after doing what? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.George Eliot (1819-1880) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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all wound up— Very tense and/or nervous. Jittery. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Yaya Matsuri (2025)The Yaya Matsuri, held in Owase, Japan, during the first five days in February, features mikoshi (portable shrines) carried through the streets by groups of young men who meet and deliberately crash into each other. The festival takes its name from their shouts—"Yaya! Yaya!"—as they run into one another. Several special events, including dances, are held during the five-day festival. On the last night, there is a ceremony at the Owase Shrine to determine who will participate in the festival the next year. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: punctuationem dash, en dash - The em dash is the long dash used in punctuation whose length is based on the width of the letter M; the en dash is shorter (the width of an N) and the hyphen is even shorter. More... punctual - From Latin punctum, "point," it can mean "pertaining to punctuation," or "of or relating to a point in space." More... square brackets, parentheses, braces - Square brackets were formerly called crotchets, round brackets are commonly called parentheses, and curly brackets are called braces; the punctuation called brackets derives from the bookshelf type, implying that, in writing, these marks "lift up" a section of a sentence. More... stigmeology - The art of punctuation. More... | |
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| Mismatch | |
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