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March 25, 2026
Mar 25, 2026
Word
crescent
adjective
Definition
marked by an increase : increasing
Example
"The people love me, and the sea is mine; / My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope / Says it will come to th' full." (William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra)
Origin
You probably know "crescent" as the shape of a moon that is less than half-illuminated. These days, "crescent" is generally used of either a waxing or waning moon, but that wasn't always the case. Originally, it referred only to the increasing illumination phase that immediately follows the new moon. That original meaning nicely reflects the meaning of the word's Latin ancestor "crescere," which means "to grow." The meaning of "crescere" also shines through when we use "crescent" as an adjective meaning "increasing" or "growing." English speakers have been using "crescent" in this way since the 16th century.
Webster's Dictionary
Idiom
dull as dishwater
Boring, tedious, as in That lecture was dull as dishwater. The original simile, dull as ditchwater, dating from the 1700s, alluded to the muddy water in roadside ditches. In the first half of the 1900s, perhaps through mispronunciation, it became dishwater, that is, the dingy, grayish water in which dirty dishes had soaked.
The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
Fun facts
  1. In 1908, the first lollipop-making machine started in New Haven, CT.
  2. There are 18 different animal shapes in the animal cracker zoo.
Snapple's under-the-cap 'Real Facts'
Artist
Kleophrades Painter

The Kleophrades Painter is the name given to the anonymous red-figure Athenian vase painter, who was active from approximately 510 – 470 BCE and whose work, considered amongst the finest of the red figure style, is identified by its stylistic traits.

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Historical figure
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor
912 AD - 973 AD

Otto I, traditionally known as Otto the Great, was German king from 936 and Holy Roman Emperor from 962 until his death in 973. He was the oldest son of Henry I the Fowler and Matilda.

Otto inherited the Duchy of Saxony and the kingship of the Germans upon his father's death in 936. He continued his father's work of unifying all German tribes into a single kingdom and greatly expanded the king's powers at the expense of the aristocracy. Through strategic marriages and personal appointments, Otto installed members of his family in the kingdom's most important duchies. This reduced the various dukes, who had previously been co-equals with the king, to royal subjects under his authority. Otto transformed the Roman Catholic Church in Germany to strengthen royal authority and subjected its clergy to his personal control.

After putting down a brief civil war among the rebellious duchies, Otto defeated the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, thus ending the Hungarian invasions of Western Europe. The victory against the pagan Magyars earned Otto a reputation as a savior of Christendom and secured his hold over the kingdom. By 961, Otto had conquered the Kingdom of Italy.

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Historic event
Gravettian

The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian circa 33,000 years BP. It is archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified, and had mostly disappeared by c. 22,000 BP, close to the Last Glacial Maximum, although some elements lasted until c. 17,000 BP. At this point, it was replaced abruptly by the Solutrean in France and Spain, and developed into or continued as the Epigravettian in Italy, the Balkans, Ukraine and Russia.

They are known for their Venus figurines, which were typically made as either ivory or limestone carvings. The Gravettian culture was first identified at the site of La Gravette in Southwestern France.

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Quote
We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing...an actor, a writer...I am a person who does things...I write, I act...and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.
Stephen Fry