June 30, 2008
Word of the Day: banana republic
A term describing any of several small nations in Latin America that have economies based on a few agricultural crops.
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portable audio player was introduced by Sony (1979)
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Roses are red, violets are blue — well, bluish. The sky is blue, too. Grass is green. These are things that most of us know for a fact and don’t question. But what if you were colorblind? What would you see? Is life one long black-and-white movie?
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 30, 2008 is:
decimate • \DESS-uh-mayt\ • verb
1 : to take or destroy the tenth part of *2 : to cause great destruction or harm to
Example sentence:
Farmers struggled to feed their families after their crops were decimated by blight.
Did you know?
The connection between "decimate" and the number ten harks back to a brutal practice of the army of ancient Rome. A unit that was guilty of a severe crime (such as mutiny) was punished by selecting and executing one-tenth of its soldiers, thereby scaring the remaining nine-tenths into obedience. It's no surprise that the word for this practice came from Latin "decem," meaning "ten." From this root we also get our word "decimal" and the name of the month of December, originally the tenth month of the calendar before the second king of Rome decided to add January and February. In its extended uses "decimate" strayed from its "tenth" meaning and nowadays refers to the act of destroying or hurting something in great numbers.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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June 29, 2008
Spotlight of the Day: Joseph Dalton Hooker
What is the location of the world’s largest compost heap? It’s at Britain’s Kew Gardens. Made from the waste from the gardens, the compost gets recycled and is used as fertilizer in the area’s 300 acres (120 hectares). Born on this date in 1817, Joseph Dalton Hooker succeeded his father William Jackson Hooker as director of the botanical gardens. A president of the Royal Society, Joseph Hooker’s research into all kinds of plant life led him to support the theory of evolution by natural selection. He became a good friend and backer of Charles Darwin.
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blues singer, "Stormy Weather"
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