Daily Content Archive
(as of Tuesday, July 14, 2020)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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statuesque
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Attributive vs. Predicative AdjectivesWhile most adjectives can occur either as attributive adjectives or predicative adjectives, there are certain adjectives that can only occur predicatively. What are some examples? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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.jpg) The Vegetable Lamb of TartaryThe Vegetable Lamb of Tartary was a fanciful plant from Central Asia that grew lambs as its fruit. The stalks bent down to allow the lambs to graze nearby, and when the lambs ran out of food, the plant would die and the lambs could be harvested. The plant is described in a much-embellished 14th-century travelogue attributed to Englishman John Mandeville. Though the story of a wool-bearing plant was used to explain the existence of cotton, what other actual plant inspired this legend? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 The Storming of the Bastille (1789)The Bastille was a 14th-century fortress and a notorious state prison in Paris. In 1789, an angry mob stormed the prison, freeing the political prisoners held in the edifice that had come to symbolize the French monarchy's oppression of the people. The assault launched the French Revolution. Although the building itself was razed a year later, the Bastille became a symbol of French independence, and July 14th became a national holiday. How many prisoners were in the Bastille when it was stormed? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Owen Wister (1860)Wister was an American author who is best remembered for his contributions to western fiction. A well-to-do Harvard graduate, he suffered from ill health and summered in the American West, where he gained much inspiration for his writings. His popular 1902 novel The Virginian is regarded as the first western. It tells the tale of a cattle rancher who depends on a harsh code of ethics, and it helped establish the cowboy as an American folk hero. To whom is the book dedicated? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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open (one's) big mouth— To say something that is meant to be a secret; to say something in an indiscreet, noisy, or boorish manner. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Tekakwitha Feast Day (2025)The first Native American to be beatified, Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) is a venerated figure among both Catholics and Native Americans. Catholic churches hold mass on her feast day, during which congregants may offer prayers to God through her intercession. Among the North American churches and shrines, sites that have noteworthy feast day celebrations are the National Kateri Shrine in Fonda, New York, where she first encountered Christianity, and the Kateri Center at the Saint Francis-Xavier Mission at Kahnawake, Quebec, where she lived following her conversion. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: huntingpark - Originally a legal term for land held by royal grant for the keeping of game animals for royals to hunt. More... sealer, sealing - A sealer is a seal hunter and seal hunting is called sealing. More... half-cocked - Comes from hunting; a gun at half cock is in the safety position—so it came to mean "incompletely prepared." More... tryst - Comes from Scottish as a variant of an old word, trist, "an appointed place or station in hunting," and now means a "secret meeting of lovers." More... | |