Daily Content Archive

(as of Tuesday, April 30, 2019)
Word of the Day

brigand

Definition:(noun) An armed thief who is (usually) a member of a band.
Synonyms:bandit
Usage: You looked more like a brigand than an honest man, with your beard six inches, and your hair a foot long.
Daily Grammar Lesson

How to Conjugate "Be"

The verb "be" is unique among verbs for having a huge variety of conjugations. Not only does it have irregular inflections for the past simple tense and past participle, but it also has specific forms depending on what two things? More...
Article of the Day

The Bow Street Runners

The Bow Street Runners have been called London's first professional police force, as they were paid by the magistrate, using funds from the central government, to pursue and arrest criminals. The group was established in 1749 by the English author Henry Fielding, who had taken up law and been appointed magistrate after his plays satirizing political corruption had resulted in his effective banishment from the theater. Fielding's force was established the same year that he published what novel? More...
This Day in History

Casey Jones Dies on the Cannonball Express (1900)

Jones was an American locomotive engineer whose main claim to fame, until his fateful run on the Cannonball Express, was his punctuality. On April 30, 1900, he was driving the Cannonball Express south on a dangerous, accident-prone run when he suddenly saw a stalled freight train ahead. Instead of jumping to safety, he stayed to slow his train, saving his coworkers and passengers but losing his own life in the process. Who wrote the ballad that immortalized him as a folk hero? More...
Today's Birthday

Willie Nelson (1933)

Nelson is an American musician who helped create the blues-rock-country genre known as "outlaw music." In his five-decade career, he has made more than 200 recordings. In the 1960s, he became a successful songwriter in Nashville but was not recognized for his own singing until he moved back to Texas and adopted the unique image that made him an icon. He is known for raising money to aid farmers and for his generous appearances at benefit concerts. What hit song did he write for Patsy Cline? More...
Quotation of the Day
A good face they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World!

Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Idiom of the Day

no one in his/her/their right mind would (do something)

No one who is sane would consider doing something; someone would have to be crazy to do something. (In this case, "their" is used as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun.) More...
Today's Holiday

Stratford Festival (2020)

What started in Stratford, Ontario, in 1953 as a six-week Shakespearean drama festival under the artistic leadership of Alec Guinness and Irene Worth has since expanded into a 26-week event drawing an audience of half a million people. All of Shakespeare's plays have been performed here over the years, as well as works by Sophocles (c. 496-406 BCE), Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Jean-Baptiste Molière (1622-1673), Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Richard Sheridan (1751-1816), Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), and a number of Canadian playwrights. More...
Word Trivia

Today's topic: temper

acerbic - Often describes a sharp or biting mood, temper, tone, or wit; acerbity is normally a bit less sharp than sarcasm. More...

tirret - An outburst of temper. More...

mansuetude - Tameness or sweetness of temper. More...

tamper - First meant "to work in clay" or "temper in clay." More...

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