MURPHY'S LAW (Idiom) Murphy's Law may have originated in the scientific or engineering community (but no one knows who "Murphy...

POETIC METER (Written Conventions of English) Meter is the "beat" in a line of poetry. Even natural speech can have meter, but her...

RECRUITMENT (Vocabulary: Business Terms) Recruitment is the process of finding suitable candidates to fill a position in a company. Steps in...

REPRODUCTIVE CLONING (Scientific Advances) Reproductive cloning (also called "organism cloning") is the implantation of a cloned e...

BEGGARS CAN'T BE CHOOSERS Meaning:  Someone who depends on others can't insist on having things a certain way. "Beggars" h...

THE PLANETS (Gustav Holst, English, 1914-1917) Each movement of Holst's seven-movement orchestral suite The Planets is named for one pl...

FOUR IDIOMS FROM THE SPORT OF BOXING IDIOM:  in your corner MEANING: on your side EXAMPLE:  If you get arrested, you need a good lawyer in ...

SPOONERISMS (Figures of Speech) Pity the Rev. Dr. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), an Oxford don (for more than sixty years!) who, in ...

LITERARY GENRES (Vocabulary: Art Terms) Here are five genres (categories) of writing and the people who write them: novels and novellas: T...

LOGIC (Philosophy) In everyday speech, "logic" just means something like "clear thinking." But in formal terms, there ar...