1.
British and American keyboards
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There are two major English language computer keyboard layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout defined in BS4822. In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland and India, the US keyboard might also be used. The UK variant of the IBM Enhanced keyboard commonly used with personal computers designed for Microsoft Windows differs from the US layout as follows, while adequate for users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland, this solution caused difficulty in other English-speaking countries. However, in recent editions, the number of options was increased, allowing users to select the correct keyboard. For example, one is given a number of options for locality that will usually correctly match dialect. Further, even if the keyboard layout does not match the device driver software layout that was pre-selected. The US International layout changes the, ~, ^, the US International layout also uses the right alt as a modifier to enter special characters. The non-standard default U. S. layout on Apple Macintosh computers allows input of diacritical characters, the Enter key spans two rows and is shaped similarly to the Enter key of many ISO PC keyboards. Some older Unix/Linux software such as Emacs use the left Alt key as a Meta key which harks back to older MIT or LISP computers, Keyboard layout Technical standards in Hong Kong
2.
American and British English spelling differences
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Many of the differences between American and British English date back to a time when spelling standards had not yet developed. For instance, some spellings seen as American today were once used in Britain. But English-language spelling reform has rarely been adopted otherwise, and thus modern English orthography varies somewhat between countries and is far from phonemic in any country, in the early 18th century, English spelling was inconsistent. These differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries, todays British English spellings mostly follow Johnsons A Dictionary of the English Language, while many American English spellings follow Websters An American Dictionary of the English Language. Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic, in A Companion to the American Revolution, John Algeo notes, it is often assumed that characteristically American spellings were invented by Noah Webster. He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in America, rather he chose already existing options such as center, color and check for the simplicity, analogy or etymology. William Shakespeares first folios, for example, used spellings like center and color as much as centre, Webster did attempt to introduce some reformed spellings, as did the Simplified Spelling Board in the early 20th century, but most were not adopted. In Britain, the influence of those who preferred the Norman spellings of words proved to be decisive, later spelling adjustments in the United Kingdom had little effect on todays American spellings and vice versa. For the most part, the systems of most Commonwealth countries. Australian spelling has also strayed slightly from British spelling, with some American spellings incorporated as standard, New Zealand spelling is almost identical to British spelling, except in the word fiord. There is also an increasing use of macrons in words that originated in Māori, most words ending in an unstressed -our in British English end in -or in American English. Wherever the vowel is unreduced in pronunciation, e. g. contour, velour, paramour and troubadour the spelling is the same everywhere, most words of this kind came from Latin, where the ending was spelled -or. They were first adopted into English from early Old French, after the Norman conquest of England, the ending became -our to match the Old French spelling. The -our ending was not only used in new English borrowings, however, -or was still sometimes found, and the first three folios of Shakespeares plays used both spellings before they were standardised to -our in the Fourth Folio of 1685. After the Renaissance, new borrowings from Latin were taken up with their original -or ending, Websters 1828 dictionary had only -or and is given much of the credit for the adoption of this form in the United States. Johnson, unlike Webster, was not an advocate of spelling reform and he preferred French over Latin spellings because, as he put it, the French generally supplied us. In Jeffersons original draft it is spelled honour, Honor and honour were equally frequent in Britain until the 17th century, honor still is, in the UK, the usual spelling as a persons name and appears in Honor Oak, a district of London. In derivatives and inflected forms of the words, British usage depends on the nature of the suffix used
3.
Americas
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The Americas, also collectively called America, encompass the totality of the continents of North America and South America. Together they make up most of the land in Earths western hemisphere, along with their associated islands, they cover 8% of Earths total surface area and 28. 4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera, a chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by river basins, such as the Amazon, St. Lawrence River / Great Lakes basin, Mississippi. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 42,000 and 17,000 years ago, a second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later from Asia. The subsequent migration of the Inuit into the neoarctic around 3500 BCE completed what is regarded as the settlement by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The first known European settlement in the Americas was by the Norse explorer Leif Ericson, however, the colonization never became permanent and was later abandoned. The voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1502 resulted in permanent contact with European powers, diseases introduced from Europe and Africa devastated the indigenous peoples, and the European powers colonized the Americas. Mass emigration from Europe, including numbers of indentured servants. Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution in 1776, the population is over 1 billion, with over 65% of them living in one of the three most populous countries. As of the beginning of the 2010s, the most populous urban agglomerations are Mexico City, New York, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, all of them megacities. The name America was first recorded in 1507 in the Cosmographiae Introductio, apparently written by Matthias Ringmann and it first applied to both North and South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. Amerigen means land of Amerigo and derives from Amerigo and gen, America accorded with the feminine names of Asia, Africa, and Europa. When conceived as a continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America. In some countries of the world, America is considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents, the first inhabitants migrated into the Americas from Asia. Habitation sites are known in Alaska and the Yukon from at least 20,000 years ago, beyond that, the specifics of the Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. Widespread habitation of the Americas occurred during the glacial maximum
4.
British colonization of the Americas
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British colonization of the Americas began in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia and reached its peak when colonies had been established throughout the Americas. The British were among the most important colonizers of the Americas, three types of colonies existed in the British Empire in America during the height of its power in the 18th Century. These were charter colonies, proprietary colonies and royal colonies, a group of 13 British American colonies collectively broke from the British Empire in the 1770s through a successful revolution, establishing the modern United States. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, British territories in the Americas were slowly granted more responsible government, in 1838 the Durham Report recommended full responsible government for Canada, but this was not fully implemented for another decade. Eventually, with the Confederation of Canada, the Canadian colonies were granted significant autonomy, other colonies in the Americas followed at a much slower pace. In this way, two countries in North America, ten in the Caribbean, and one in South America have received their independence from the United Kingdom, all of these are members of the Commonwealth of Nations and nine are Commonwealth realms. The eight current British overseas territories in the Americas have varying degrees of self-government, a number of English colonies were established under a system of Proprietary Governors, who were appointed under mercantile charters to English joint stock companies to found and run settlements. In 1607, Jamestown, Virginia was founded by the London Company, in Newfoundland, a chartered company known as the Society of Merchant Venturers established a permanent settlement at Cupers Cove, from 1610. St. Georges, Bermuda was founded by the Virginia Company, in 1664, England took over the Dutch colony of New Netherland which England renamed the Province of New York. With New Netherland, the English also came to control the former New Sweden and this later became part of Pennsylvania after that was established in 1680. The Kingdom of Scotland tried unsuccessfully to establish a colony at Darién, thousands of Scotsmen also participated in English colonization before the two countries were united in 1707. The Kingdom of Great Britain acquired the French colony of Acadia in 1713 and then Canada, in the north, the Hudsons Bay Company actively traded for fur with the indigenous peoples, and had competed with French, Aboriginal, and Metis fur traders. The company came to control the entire basin of Hudson Bay. The small part of the Hudson Bay drainage south of the 49th parallel went to the United States in the Anglo-American Convention of 1818. Great Britain also colonised the west coast of North America, indirectly via the Hudsons Bay Company licenses west of the Rocky Mountains, the Columbia District and New Caledonia fur district. British Columbia was expanded with the inclusion of the Stikine Territory in 1863, in 1867, the colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada combined to form a self-governing dominion, named Canada, within the British Empire. Quebec and Nova Scotia had been ceded to Britain by the French, the colonies of Prince Edward Island and British Columbia joined over the next six years, and Newfoundland joined in 1949. Ruperts Land and the North-Western Territory were ceded to Canada in 1870 and this area now consists of the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, as well as the Northwest Territories, the Yukon Territory, and Nunavut
5.
British Empire
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The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It originated with the possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23% of the population at the time. As a result, its political, legal, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread, during the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after the American War of Independence caused Britain to lose some of its oldest and most populous colonies. British attention soon turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, after the defeat of France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century. In the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution began to transform Britain, the British Empire expanded to include India, large parts of Africa and many other territories throughout the world. In Britain, political attitudes favoured free trade and laissez-faire policies, during the 19th Century, Britains population increased at a dramatic rate, accompanied by rapid urbanisation, which caused significant social and economic stresses. To seek new markets and sources of raw materials, the Conservative Party under Benjamin Disraeli launched a period of imperialist expansion in Egypt, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand became self-governing dominions. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britains economic lead, subsequent military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily upon its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on the military, financial and manpower resources of Britain, although the British Empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after World War I, Britain was no longer the worlds pre-eminent industrial or military power. In the Second World War, Britains colonies in Southeast Asia were occupied by Imperial Japan, despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige helped to accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britains most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence as part of a larger movement in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997 marked for many the end of the British Empire, fourteen overseas territories remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Kingdom is now one of 16 Commonwealth nations, a grouping known informally as the Commonwealth realms, that share a monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was ever heard of his ships again
6.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
7.
Pronunciation
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Pronunciation is the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have correct pronunciation, then it refers to both within a particular dialect, syllables are counted as units of sound that they use in their language. The branch of linguistics which studies these units of sound is phonetics, phones which play the same role are grouped together into classes called phonemes, the study of these is phonemics or phonematics or phonology. Phones as components of articulation are usually described using the International Phonetic Alphabet
8.
Spelling
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In another words it is interpretation of speech sound into writing. Spelling is one of the elements of orthography, and highly standardized spelling is a prescriptive element, spellings originated as transcriptions of the sounds of spoken language according to the alphabetic principle. They remain largely reflective of the sounds, although fully phonemic spelling is an ideal that most languages orthographies only approximate and this is true for various reasons, including that pronunciation changes over time in all languages, yet spellings as visual norms may resist change. Uniformity in the spelling of words is one of the features of a language in modern times. In countries where there is a language academy, such as France, the Netherlands. Examples include, German orthography reform of 1996 Portuguese spelling reform French rectifications orthographiques of 1990, Spelling tests are commonly used to assess a students mastery over the words in the spelling lessons the student has received so far. They can also be a practice method. Spelling bees are competitions to determine the best speller of a group, prominent spelling bees are even televised, such as the National Spelling Bee in the United States. Divergent spelling is an advertising technique, used to attract attention or to render a trademark suggestive rather than merely descriptive. The pastry chains Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme, for example, while some words admit multiple spellings, some spellings are not considered standard, and thus labeled as misspellings. A misspelled word can be a series of letters that represents no correctly spelled word of the language at all or a correct spelling of another word. Misspellings of the type can easily make their way into printed material because they are not caught by simple computerized spell checkers. Misspellings may be due to either typing errors, or lack of knowledge of the correct spelling, whether or not a word is misspelled may depend on context, as is the case with American / British English distinctions. Misspelling can also be a matter of opinion when variant spellings are accepted by some, for example, miniscule is a misspelling to many, and yet it is listed as an acceptable variant in some dictionaries. A well-known Internet scam involves the registration of names that are deliberate misspellings of well-known corporate names in order to mislead or defraud. The practice is known as typosquatting. Google – accidental misspelling of googol and its possible Google took this spelling from Steve Martins Googlephonics track from his 1979 album Comedy Is Not Pretty. In it, he described Googlephonic as being. the highest number of speakers before infinity, ovaltine, a popular bedtime drink in the UK and Australia, came about because someone misspelled the original name Ovomaltine on the trademark documentation
9.
Idiom
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An idiom is a phrase or a fixed expression that has a figurative, or sometimes literal, meaning. Categorized as formulaic language, a figurative meaning is different from the literal meaning. There are thousands of idioms, occurring frequently in all languages and it is estimated that there are at least twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions in the English language. Many idiomatic expressions, in their use, were not figurative but had literal meaning. If the jars were spilled before the counting of votes was complete, anyone would be able to see which jar had more beans, over time, the practice was discontinued and the idiom became figurative. Break a leg, used as a way of wishing good luck in a performance or presentation. By wishing someone bad luck, it is supposed that the opposite will occur, in linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting the principle of compositionality. That compositionality is the key notion for the analysis of idioms is emphasized in most accounts of idioms and this principle states that the meaning of a whole should be constructed from the meanings of the parts that make up the whole. In other words, one should be in a position to understand the whole if one understands the meanings of each of the parts that make up the whole, the following example is widely employed to illustrate the point, Fred kicked the bucket. Understood compositionally, Fred has literally kicked an actual, physical bucket, the much more likely idiomatic reading, however, is non-compositional, Fred is understood to have died. Arriving at the reading from the literal reading is unlikely for most speakers. What this means is that the reading is, rather. In phraseology, idioms are defined as a sub-type of phraseme, john Saeed defines an idiom as collocated words that became affixed to each other until metamorphosing into a fossilised term. This collocation of words redefines each component word in the word-group, idioms usually do not translate well, in some cases, when an idiom is translated directly word-for-word into another language, either its meaning is changed or it is meaningless. When two or three words are used together in a particular sequence, the words are said to be irreversible binomials. Usage will prevent the words from being displaced or rearranged, for example, a person may be left high and dry but never dry and high. This idiom in turn means that the person is left in their condition rather than being assisted so that their condition improves. Not all Siamese twins are idioms, however, chips and dip is an irreversible binomial, but it refers to literal food items, not idiomatic ones
10.
Number
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Numbers that answer the question How many. Are 0,1,2,3 and so on, when used to indicate position in a sequence they are ordinal numbers. To the Pythagoreans and Greek mathematician Euclid, the numbers were 2,3,4,5, Euclid did not consider 1 to be a number. Numbers like 3 +17 =227, expressible as fractions in which the numerator and denominator are whole numbers, are rational numbers and these make it possible to measure such quantities as two and a quarter gallons and six and a half miles. What we today would consider a proof that a number is irrational Euclid called a proof that two lengths arising in geometry have no common measure, or are incommensurable, Euclid included proofs of incommensurability of lengths arising in geometry in his Elements. In the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, a pair of walking forward marked addition. They were the first known civilization to use negative numbers, negative numbers came into widespread use as a result of their utility in accounting. They were used by late medieval Italian bankers, by 1740 BC, the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts. In Maya civilization zero was a numeral with a shape as a symbol. The ancient Egyptians represented all fractions in terms of sums of fractions with numerator 1, for example, 2/5 = 1/3 + 1/15. Such representations are known as Egyptian Fractions or Unit Fractions. The earliest written approximations of π are found in Egypt and Babylon, in Babylon, a clay tablet dated 1900–1600 BC has a geometrical statement that, by implication, treats π as 25/8 =3.1250. In Egypt, the Rhind Papyrus, dated around 1650 BC, astronomical calculations in the Shatapatha Brahmana use a fractional approximation of 339/108 ≈3.139. Other Indian sources by about 150 BC treat π as √10 ≈3.1622 The first references to the constant e were published in 1618 in the table of an appendix of a work on logarithms by John Napier. However, this did not contain the constant itself, but simply a list of logarithms calculated from the constant and it is assumed that the table was written by William Oughtred. The discovery of the constant itself is credited to Jacob Bernoulli, the first known use of the constant, represented by the letter b, was in correspondence from Gottfried Leibniz to Christiaan Huygens in 1690 and 1691. Leonhard Euler introduced the letter e as the base for natural logarithms, Euler started to use the letter e for the constant in 1727 or 1728, in an unpublished paper on explosive forces in cannons, and the first appearance of e in a publication was Eulers Mechanica. While in the subsequent years some researchers used the letter c, e was more common, the first numeral system known is Babylonian numeric system, that has a 60 base, it was introduced in 3100 B. C. and is the first Positional numeral system known
11.
Noah Webster
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Noah Webster, Jr. was an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author. He has been called the Father of American Scholarship and Education and his blue-backed speller books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read, secularizing their education. According to Ellis, he gave Americans a secular catechism to the nation-state, Webster was born in the Western Division of Hartford to an established family. His father Noah Sr. was a descendant of Connecticut Governor John Webster and his father was primarily a farmer, though he was also deacon of the local Congregational church, captain of the towns militia, and a founder of a local book society. After American independence, he was appointed a justice of the peace, Websters father never attended college, but he was intellectually curious and prized education. Websters mother spent long hours teaching her children spelling, mathematics, at age six, Webster began attending a dilapidated one-room primary school built by West Hartfords Ecclesiastical Society. Years later, he described the teachers as the dregs of humanity, Websters experiences there motivated him to improve the educational experience of future generations. At age fourteen, his church pastor began tutoring him in Latin, Webster enrolled at Yale just before his 16th birthday, studying during his senior year with Ezra Stiles, Yales president. His four years at Yale overlapped the American Revolutionary War and, because of shortages and threatened British invasions. Webster served in the Connecticut Militia and his father had mortgaged the farm to send Webster to Yale, but he was now on his own and had nothing more to do with his family. Webster lacked career plans after graduating from Yale in 1778, later writing that a liberal arts education disqualifies a man for business and he taught school briefly in Glastonbury, but the working conditions were harsh and the pay low. While studying law under future U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, Webster also taught full-time in Hartford—which was grueling, and ultimately impossible to continue. He quit his studies for a year and lapsed into a depression, he then found another practicing attorney to tutor him. As the Revolutionary War was still going on, he could not find work as a lawyer and he received a masters degree from Yale by giving an oral dissertation to the Yale graduating class. Later that year, he opened a private school in western Connecticut that was a success. Nevertheless, he closed it and left town, probably because of a failed romance. He then founded a school catering to wealthy parents in Goshen, New York and, by 1785, he had written his speller, a grammar book. Proceeds from continuing sales of the popular blue-backed speller enabled Webster to spend years working on his famous dictionary
12.
Webster's Dictionary
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The term Websters has become a generic trademark in the U. S. for dictionaries of the English language. For this reason the term may refer to any dictionary at all that chooses to use the name. Also, Websters is often used to refer to a generic dictionary, Noah Webster, the author of the readers and spelling books that dominated the American market at the time, spent decades of research in compiling his dictionaries. His first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic. In A Companion to the American Revolution, John Algeo notes and he was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in America, but he did not originate them. Rather he chose already existing options such as center, color and check on such grounds as simplicity, in William Shakespeares first folios, for example, spellings such as center and color are the most common. He spent the two decades working to expand his dictionary. In 1828, at the age of 70, Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language in two volumes containing 70,000 entries, as against the 58,000 of any previous dictionary. There were 2,500 copies printed, at $20 for the two volumes, at first the set sold poorly. When he lowered the price to $15, its sales improved, not all copies were bound at the same time, the book also appeared in publishers boards, other original bindings of a later date are not unknown. In 1841, 82-year-old Noah Webster published an edition of his lexicographical masterpiece with the help of his son. Its title page does not claim the status of second edition, B. L. Hamlen of New Haven, Connecticut, prepared the 1841 printing of the second edition. When Webster died, his heirs sold unbound sheets of his 1841 revision American Dictionary of the English Language to the firm of J. S. & C. Adams of Amherst, Massachusetts. This firm bound and published a number of copies in 1844 – the same edition that Emily Dickinson used as a tool for her poetic composition. However, a $15 price tag on the book made it too expensive to sell easily, Merriam acquired rights from Adams, as well as signing a contract with Webster’s heirs for sole rights. The third printing of the edition was by George and Charles Merriam of Springfield, Massachusetts. This was the first Websters Dictionary with a Merriam imprint, lepore demonstrates Websters innovative ideas about language and politics and shows why Websters endeavours were at first so poorly received. Culturally conservative Federalists denounced the work as radical—too inclusive in its lexicon, meanwhile, Websters old foes, the Jeffersonian Republicans, attacked the man, labelling him mad for such an undertaking
13.
George Bernard Shaw
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He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman, Pygmalion and Saint Joan. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1873, where he established himself as a writer and novelist. By the mid-1880s he was a theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society, Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, 1894s Arms and the Man. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen, he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara, The Doctors Dilemma and Caesar, Shaws expressed views were often contentious, he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform while opposing vaccination and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in the First World War as equally culpable and he castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period, and became a citizen of the Irish Free State in 1934, maintaining dual citizenship. He was prolific, finishing during the years a series of often ambitious plays which achieved varying degrees of popular success. Since Shaws death, opinion has varied about his works and he has at times been rated as second only to William Shakespeare among English-language dramatists, analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of playwrights. The word Shavian has entered the language as encapsulating Shaws ideas, Shaw was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello, a lower-middle-class part of Dublin. He was the youngest child and only son of George Carr Shaw and his elder siblings were Lucinda Frances and Elinor Agnes. The Shaw family was of English descent and belonged to the dominant Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, George Carr Shaw and his relatives secured him a sinecure in the civil service, from which he was pensioned off in the early 1850s, thereafter he worked irregularly as a corn merchant. In 1852 he married Bessie Gurly, in the view of Shaws biographer Michael Holroyd she married to escape a tyrannical great-aunt, if, as Holroyd and others surmise, Georges motives were mercenary, then he was disappointed, as Bessie brought him little of her familys money. She came to despise her ineffectual and often drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son later described as a life of shabby-genteel poverty. By the time of Shaws birth, his mother had become close to George John Lee, Shaw retained a lifelong obsession that Lee might have been his biological father, there is no consensus among Shavian scholars on the likelihood of this. The young Shaw suffered no harshness from his mother, but he recalled that her indifference. He found solace in the music that abounded in the house, Lee was a conductor and teacher of singing, Bessie had a fine mezzo-soprano voice and was much influenced by Lees unorthodox method of vocal production. The Shaws house was filled with music, with frequent gatherings of singers and players
14.
Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Fingal OFlahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he one of Londons most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment, Wildes parents were successful Anglo-Irish, Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life, at university, Wilde read Greats, he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the philosophy of aestheticism. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles, known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with social themes. He wrote Salome in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, at the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest, was still being performed in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wildes lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, the charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest, after two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain, there he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46, Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and Jane Wilde, two years behind William. Wildes mother was of Italian descent, and under the pseudonym Speranza and she read the Young Irelanders poetry to Oscar and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. Lady Wildes interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece, William Wilde was Irelands leading oto-ophthalmologic surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland. He also wrote books about Irish archaeology and peasant folklore, a renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the citys poor at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road. On his fathers side Wilde was descended from a Dutchman, Colonel de Wilde, on his mothers side Wildes ancestors included a bricklayer from County Durham who emigrated to Ireland sometime in the 1770s. Wilde was baptised as an infant in St, marks Church, Dublin, the local Church of Ireland church
15.
The Canterville Ghost
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The Canterville Ghost is a short story by Oscar Wilde, widely adapted for the screen and stage. It was the first of Wildes stories to be published, appearing in two parts in The Court and Society Review,23 February and 2 March 1887. The story is about a family who moves to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead nobleman, the home of the Canterville Ghost was the ancient Canterville Chase, which has all the accoutrements of a traditional haunted house. Descriptions of the wainscoting, the library panelled in oak. Wilde mixes the macabre with comedy, juxtaposing devices from traditional English ghost stories such as creaking floorboards, clanking chains, the story begins when Mr Otis and family move into Canterville Chase, despite warnings from Lord Canterville that the house is haunted. Mr Otis says that he take the furniture as well as the ghost at valuation. The Otis family includes Mr and Mrs Otis, their eldest son Washington, their daughter Virginia, the other characters include the Canterville Ghost, the Duke of Cheshire, Mrs Umney, and Rev. Augustus Dampier. At first, none of the Otis family believe in ghosts, the family hears clanking chains, they witness reappearing bloodstains on the floor just by the fireplace, which are removed every time they appear in various forms. But, humorously, none of these scare the Otis family in the least, in fact, upon hearing the clanking noises in the hallway, Mr Otis promptly gets out of bed and pragmatically offers the ghost Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator to oil his chains. Despite the ghosts efforts to appear in the most gruesome guises, the family refuses to be frightened, when Mrs Otis notices a mysterious red mark on the floor, she simply replies that she does not at all care for blood stains in the sitting room. Wilde describes Mrs Otis as a very handsome middle-aged woman who has been a celebrated New York belle, Mrs Otis is given Wildes highest praise when he says, Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English. The most colourful character in the story is undoubtedly the ghost himself, Sir Simon and he assumes a series of dramatic roles in his failed attempts to impress and terrify the Otises, making it easy to imagine him as a comical character in a stage play. The ghost has the ability to change forms, so he taps into his repertoire of tricks, but none of them works with these Americans. Sir Simon schemes, but even as his costumes become increasingly gruesome, his antics do nothing to scare his house guests, and he falls victim to tripwires, peashooters, butter-slides, and falling buckets of water. In a particularly comical scene, he is frightened by the sight of a ghost rigged up by the mischievous twins and he exposes his vulnerability during an encounter with Virginia, the Otiss fifteen-year-old daughter. Virginia is different from everyone else in the family, and Sir Simon recognizes this and he tells her that he has not slept in three hundred years and wants desperately to do so. The ghost reveals to Virginia the tragic tale of his wife, unlike the rest of her family, Virginia does not dismiss the ghost. She takes him seriously, she listens to him and learns an important lesson and she does weep for him and pray for him, and she disappears with Sir Simon through the wainscoting and goes with him to the Garden of Death and bids the ghost farewell
16.
Henry Sweet
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Henry Sweet was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian. As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic languages, particularly Old English, in addition, Sweet published works on larger issues of phonetics and grammar in language and the teaching of languages. Many of his ideas have remained influential, and a number of his works continue to be in print, Henry Sweet was born in St. Pancras in London. He was educated at Bruce Castle School and Kings College School, in 1864, he spent a short time studying at the Heidelberg University. Upon his return to England, he took up a job with a trading company in London. Five years later, aged twenty-four, he won a scholarship in German, Sweet neglected his formal academic coursework, concentrating instead on pursuing excellence in his private studies. Early recognition came in his first year at Oxford, when the prestigious Philological Society published a paper of his on Old English. In 1871, still an undergraduate, he edited King Alfreds translation of the Cura Pastoralis for the Early English Text Society and he graduated, nearly thirty years old, with a fourth-class degree in literae humaniores. Subsequent works on Old English included An Anglo-Saxon Reader, The Oldest English Texts, in 1877, Sweet published A Handbook of Phonetics, which attracted international attention among scholars and teachers of English in Europe. He followed up with the Elementarbuch des gesprochenen Englisch, which was adapted as A Primer of Spoken English. This included the first scientific description of educated London speech, later known as received pronunciation, in addition, he developed a version of shorthand called Current Shorthand, which had both orthographic and phonetic modes. His emphasis on language and phonetics made him a pioneer in language teaching. In 1901, Sweet was made reader in phonetics at Oxford, the Sounds of English was his last book on English pronunciation. Other books by Sweet include An Icelandic Primer with Grammar, Notes and Glossary, The History of Language, Sweet was also closely involved in the early history of the Oxford English Dictionary. His relationship with the Oxford University Press was often strained, Sweet died on 30 April 1912 in Oxford, of pernicious anemia, he left no children. Sweet has retained a reputation as the man who taught Europe phonetics and his work established an applied linguistics tradition in language teaching which has continued without interruption to the present day. A bibliography and Collected Papers were published by H. C, the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas is named after him. It holds annual colloquia, and publishes the journal Language and History, charles Leslie Wrenn, Henry Sweet, Transactions of the Philological Society, vol
17.
Globalization
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Globalization or globalisation is the action or procedure of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture. Advances in transportation and in telecommunications infrastructure have been factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of economic. Large-scale globalization began in the 1820s, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the connectivity of the worlds economies and cultures grew very quickly. The term globalization is recent, only establishing its current meaning in the 1970s, further, environmental challenges such as global warming, cross-boundary water and air pollution, and overfishing of the ocean are linked with globalization. Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization, economics, socio-cultural resources, academic literature commonly subdivides globalization into three major areas, economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization. The term globalization is derived from the word globalize, which refers to the emergence of a network of economic systems. One of the earliest known usages of the term as a noun was in a 1930 publication entitled Towards New Education, a related term, corporate giants, was coined by Charles Taze Russell in 1897 to refer to the largely national trusts and other large enterprises of the time. By the 1960s, both began to be used as synonyms by economists and other social scientists. Economist Theodore Levitt is widely credited with coining the term in an article entitled Globalization of Markets, However, the term globalization was in use well before this and had been used by other scholars as early as 1981. Levitt can be credited with popularizing the term and bringing it into the mainstream audience in the later half of the 1980s. Due to the complexity of the concept, research projects, articles, sociologists Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King define globalization as all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society. Globalization can be located on a continuum with the local, national and regional, without reference to such expansive spatial connections, there can be no clear or coherent formulation of this term. A satisfactory definition of globalization must capture each of these elements, extensity, intensity, velocity and it pertains to the increasing ease with which somebody on one side of the world can interact, to mutual benefit, with somebody on the other side of the world. The ideological dimension, according to Steger, is filled with a range of norms, claims, beliefs and they have also argued that four different forms of globalization can be distinguished that complement and cut across the solely empirical dimensions. According to James, the oldest dominant form of globalization is embodied globalization, a second form is agency-extended globalization, the circulation of agents of different institutions, organizations, and polities, including imperial agents. Object-extended globalization, a form, is the movement of commodities. He calls the transmission of ideas, images, knowledge, and information across world-space disembodied globalization and he asserted that the pace of globalization was quickening and that its impact on business organization and practice would continue to grow. Economist Takis Fotopoulos defined economic globalization as the opening and deregulation of commodity, capital and he used political globalization to refer to the emergence of a transnational elite and a phasing out of the nation-state
18.
Phrasal verb
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The term phrasal verb is commonly applied to two or three distinct but related constructions in English, a verb and a particle and/or a preposition co-occur forming a single semantic unit. This semantic unit cannot be based upon the meanings of the individual parts in isolation. In other words, the meaning is non-compositional and thus unpredictable, phrasal verbs that include a preposition are known as prepositional verbs and phrasal verbs that include a particle are also known as particle verbs. Additional alternative terms for phrasal verb are compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle construction, two-part word/verb, and three-part word/verb, there are at least three main types of phrasal verb constructions depending on whether the verb combines with a preposition, a particle, or both. The words constituting the phrasal verb constructions in the examples are in bold. Who is looking after the kids, – after is a preposition that introduces the prepositional phrase after the kids. – on is a preposition that introduces the phrase on nobody. I ran into an old friend, – into is a preposition that introduces the prepositional phrase into an old friend. – after is a preposition that introduces the phrase after her mother. – for is a preposition that introduces the phrase for a linguist. You should stand by your friend, – by is a preposition that introduces the prepositional phrase by your friend. – up is a particle, not a preposition, – over is a particle, not a preposition. Why does he always dress down, – down is a particle, not a preposition. You should not give in so quickly, – in is a particle, not a preposition. Where do they want to hang out, – out is a particle, not a preposition. She handed it in. – in is a particle, not a preposition, Verb + particle + preposition a. Who can put up with that, – up is a particle and with is a preposition. She is looking forward to a rest, – forward is a particle and to is a preposition
19.
Oxford English Dictionary
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The Oxford English Dictionary is a descriptive dictionary of the English language, published by the Oxford University Press. The second edition came to 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, in 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the edition was published. Since 2000, an edition of the dictionary has been underway. The first electronic version of the dictionary was available in 1988. The online version has been available since 2000, and as of April 2014 was receiving two million hits per month. The third edition of the dictionary will probably appear in electronic form, Nigel Portwood, chief executive of Oxford University Press. As a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary explains words by showing their development rather than merely their present-day usages, therefore, it shows definitions in the order that the sense of the word began being used, including word meanings which are no longer used. The format of the OEDs entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects and this influenced later volumes of this and other lexicographical works. As of 30 November 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary contained approximately 301,100 main entries, the dictionarys latest, complete print edition was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, as entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000, then put in 2007, then run in 2011. Despite its impressive size, the OED is neither the worlds largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language, the Dutch dictionary Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal is the worlds largest dictionary, has similar aims to the OED and took twice as long to complete. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers dictionary of the German language, begun in 1838, the official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española, and its first edition was published in 1780. The Kangxi dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716, trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the Society formally adopted the idea of a new dictionary. Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips, later the same year, the Society agreed to the project in principle, with the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. He withdrew and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor, on 12 May 1860, Coleridges dictionary plan was published and research was started
20.
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
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A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by Henry Watson Fowler, is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique, distinctions among like words, and the use of foreign terms, hence, the 1926 first-edition remains in print, along with the 1965 second-edition, edited by Ernest Gowers, and reprinted in 1983 and 1987. In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Henry W, in the entries Pedantic Humour and Polysyllabic Humour Fowler mocked the use of arcane words and the use of long words. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, Welsh rarebit Welsh rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh rarebit is stupid and wrong, moreover, he researched the Dictionary assisted by Francis, who died in 1918 of tuberculosis, which he contracted in service with the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War. Having been designed in consultation with him, it is the last fruit of a partnership began in 1903 with our translation of Lucian. The second edition, Fowler’s Modern English Usage was revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, who updated the text, contributed entries and his book has been largely rewritten. A fourth edition, edited by Jeremy Butterfield, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015, the 2009 reprinting of the 1926 first edition contains an introduction and commentary by the linguist David Crystal. The Pocket Fowlers Modern English Usage edited by Robert Allen was published by OUP in 1999 and it was based mainly on Burchfields 1996 edition, abridged to 40% by omitting about half the entries and reducing others, there was also some new content. A second edition of Allens Pocket Fowler was published in 2008, a Dictionary of Modern English Usage. The New Fowlers Modern English Usage, a Dictionary of Modern English Usage, The Classic First Edition. Introduction and notes by David Crystal, Fowlers Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Disputes in English grammar Elegant variation False scent Fowler, Henry, Winchester, a Dictionary of Modern English Usage. A Dictionary of American-English Usage Based on Fowlers Modern English Usage, signet, by arrangement with Oxford University Press. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, the Chicago Manual of Style, an American English guide to style and publishing markup. The Complete Plain Words, by Sir Ernest Gowers, practical English Usage, by Michael Swan, a grammar for non-native English speakers. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, by Pam Peters, merriam Websters Dictionary of English Usage
21.
Cricket
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Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a cricket field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard-long pitch with a wicket at each end. One team bats, attempting to score as many runs as possible, each phase of play is called an innings. After either ten batsmen have been dismissed or a number of overs have been completed, the innings ends. The winning team is the one that scores the most runs, including any extras gained, at the start of each game, two batsmen and eleven fielders enter the field of play. The striker takes guard on a crease drawn on the four feet in front of the wicket. His role is to prevent the ball hitting the stumps by use of his bat. The other batsman, known as the non-striker, waits at the end of the pitch near the bowler. A dismissed batsman must leave the field, and a teammate replaces him, the bowlers objectives are to prevent the scoring of runs and to dismiss the batsman. An over is a set of six deliveries bowled by the same bowler, the next over is bowled from the other end of the pitch by a different bowler. If a fielder retrieves the ball enough to put down the wicket with a batsman not having reached the crease at that end of the pitch. Adjudication is performed on the field by two umpires, the laws of cricket are maintained by the International Cricket Council and the Marylebone Cricket Club. Traditionally cricketers play in all-white kit, but in limited overs cricket they wear club or team colours. In addition to the kit, some players wear protective gear to prevent injury caused by the ball. Although crickets origins are uncertain, it is first recorded in south-east England in the 16th century and it spread globally with the expansion of the British Empire, leading to the first international matches in the mid-19th century. ICC, the governing body, has over 100 members. The sport is followed primarily in Australasia, Britain, the Indian subcontinent, southern Africa, womens cricket, which is organised and played separately, has also achieved international standard. A number of words have been suggested as sources for the term cricket, in the earliest definite reference to the sport in 1598 it is called creckett. One possible source for the name is the Old English cricc or cryce meaning a crutch or staff, in Samuel Johnsons Dictionary, he derived cricket from cryce, Saxon, a stick
22.
Netball
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Netball is a ball sport played by two teams of seven players. Its development, derived from early versions of basketball, began in England in the 1890s, by 1960, international playing rules had been standardised for the game, and the International Federation of Netball and Womens Basketball was formed. As of 2011, the INF comprises more than 60 national teams organized into five global regions, Games are played on a rectangular court with raised goal rings at each end. Each team attempts to score goals by passing a ball down the court, players are assigned specific positions, which define their roles within the team and restrict their movement to certain areas of the court. During general play, a player with the ball can hold on to it for three seconds before shooting for a goal or passing to another player. The winning team is the one that scores the most goals, Netball games are 60 minutes long. Variations have been developed to increase the pace and appeal to a wider audience. Netball is most popular in Commonwealth nations, specifically in schools, according to the INF, netball is played by more than 20 million people in more than 80 countries. Major domestic leagues in the include the Netball Superleague in Great Britain, Suncorp Super Netball in Australia. Three major competitions take place internationally, the quadrennial World Netball Championships, the Commonwealth Games, in 1995, netball became an International Olympic Committee recognised sport, but it has not been played at the Olympics. Netball emerged from early versions of basketball and evolved into its own sport as the number of participating in sports increased. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in the United States, the game was initially played indoors between two teams of nine players, using an association football that was thrown into closed-end peach baskets. Naismiths game spread quickly across the United States and variations of the rules soon emerged, Physical education instructor Senda Berenson developed modified rules for women in 1892, these eventually gave rise to womens basketball. Around this time separate intercollegiate rules were developed for men and women, the various basketball rules converged into a universal set in the United States. Martina Bergman-Österberg introduced a version of basketball in 1893 to her students at the Physical Training College in Hampstead. Madame Österbergs new sport acquired the name net ball, the first codified rules of netball were published in 1901 by the Ling Association, later the Physical Education Association of the United Kingdom. From England, netball spread to countries in the British Empire. Netball became a womens sport in countries where it was introduced
23.
Golf
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Golf is a club and ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not utilize a standardized playing area, the game is played on a course with an arranged progression of 18 holes. Each hole on the course must contain a tee box to start from, there are other standard forms of terrain in between, such as the fairway, rough, sand traps, and hazards but each hole on a course is unique in its specific layout and arrangement. Stroke play is the most commonly seen format at all levels, while the modern game of golf originated in 15th-century Scotland, the games ancient origins are unclear and much debated. Some historians trace the sport back to the Roman game of paganica, one theory asserts that paganica spread throughout Europe as the Romans conquered most of the continent, during the first century BC, and eventually evolved into the modern game. Others cite chuiwan as the progenitor, a Chinese game played between the eighth and 14th centuries, the game is thought to have been introduced into Europe during the Middle Ages. Another early game that resembled modern golf was known as cambuca in England, the Persian game chaugán is another possible ancient origin. In addition, kolven was played annually in Loenen, Netherlands, beginning in 1297, to commemorate the capture of the assassin of Floris V, a year earlier. The modern game originated in Scotland, where the first written record of golf is James IIs banning of the game in 1457, as an unwelcome distraction to learning archery. James IV lifted the ban in 1502 when he became a golfer himself, with golf clubs first recorded in 1503-1504, to many golfers, the Old Course at St Andrews, a links course dating to before 1574, is considered to be a site of pilgrimage. In 1764, the standard 18-hole golf course was created at St Andrews when members modified the course from 22 to 18 holes. Golf is documented as being played on Musselburgh Links, East Lothian, Scotland as early as 2 March 1672, which is certified as the oldest golf course in the world by Guinness World Records. The oldest surviving rules of golf were compiled in March 1744 for the Company of Gentlemen Golfers, later renamed The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, Andrews Golf Club in Yonkers, New York. The levels of grass are varied to increase difficulty, or to allow for putting in the case of the green, while many holes are designed with a direct line-of-sight from the teeing area to the green, some holes may bend either to the left or to the right. This is commonly called a dogleg, in reference to a dogs knee, the hole is called a dogleg left if the hole angles leftwards and dogleg right if it bends right. Sometimes, a holes direction may bend twice, this is called a double dogleg, a regular golf course consists of 18 holes, but nine-hole courses are common and can be played twice through for a full round of 18 holes. Early Scottish golf courses were laid out on links land. This gave rise to the golf links, particularly applied to seaside courses
24.
Ten-pin bowling
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Ten-pin bowling is a game in which a player rolls a bowling ball down a wood-structure or synthetic lane and towards ten pins positioned at the end of the lane. The objective is to score points by knocking down as many pins as possible, three finger holes are drilled into a traditional bowling ball, and weights vary considerably to make the sport playable for all ages. The pins are arranged in a position by an automated machine. While professional ten-pin bowling tournaments are held in countries, the sport is commonly played as a hobby by millions of people around the world. In Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, the 41. 5-inch-wide, 60-foot-long lane is bordered along its length by semicylindrical channels called gutters, which are designed to collect errant balls. The overall width of the lane including the channels is 60 1⁄8 inches, the narrow lane prevents bowling a straight line at the angle required to consistently carry all ten pins for a strike. Most skillful bowlers will roll a side spinning ball to overcome this, a foul line is marked at the seam of the start of the lane and end of the approach. If any part of a bowlers body touches the line itself or beyond after the ball is delivered, the bowl is a foul and any pins knocked over by that delivery are scored as zero. The bowler is allowed one shot at a new rack of ten pins if s/he fouled on the first roll of a frame, behind the foul line is an approach approximately 15 feet long used to gain speed and leverage on the ball before delivering it. The bowler is allowed 10 frames in which to knock down pins, the tenth frame is composed of up to three rolls, the bonus roll following a strike or spare in the tenth are fill ball used only to calculate the score of the mark rolled in the tenth. If neither a strike nor a spare is achieved in the tenth frame, Bowling has a unique scoring system which keeps track not only of the current pinfall in a frame, but also strikes and spares which allow for the value of subsequent pinfall. Effectively, there are three kinds of marks given in a score, a strike, a spare, and an open, a strike earns ten points plus the points for the next two balls thrown. A spare earns ten points plus the points for the ball thrown. Open frames count the value of the pinfall in that frame only, the maximum score in ten-pin bowling is 300. This consists of getting 12 strikes in a row in one game, very shortly before the reign of Narmer, one of the very first Egyptian pharaohs. Their discovery represents the earliest known trace of bowling. Others claim that originated in Germany around 300 A. D. as part of a religious ritual in which people would roll stones at clubs to absolve themselves of sins. A site in Southampton, England claims to be the oldest lawn bowling site still in operation, the first written reference to bowling dates to 1366, when King Edward III of England banned his troops from playing it so that they could focus more on their archery practice
25.
Bowls
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Bowls or lawn bowls is a sport in which the objective is to roll biased balls so that they stop close to a smaller ball called a jack or kitty. It is played on a green which may be flat or convex or uneven. It is normally played outdoors and the surface is either natural grass, artificial turf. It has been traced certainly to the 13th century, and conjecturally to the 12th, the jactus lapidum of which he speaks may have been more akin to shotput. It is beyond dispute, however, that the game, at any rate in a form, was played in the 13th century. A manuscript of that period in the library, Windsor. The worlds oldest surviving bowling green is the Southampton Old Bowling Green, another manuscript of the same century has a crude but spirited picture which brings us into close touch with the existing game. Three figures are introduced and a jack, a 14th-century manuscript, Book of Prayers, in the Francis Douce collection in the Bodleian Library at Oxford contains a drawing in which two persons are shown, but they bowl to no mark. Strutt suggests that the first players bowl may have been regarded by the player as a species of jack. In the third he stands almost upright, in the first he kneels, in the second he stoops, the game eventually came under the ban of king and parliament, both fearing it might jeopardise the practice of archery, then so important in battle. Statutes forbidding it and other sports were enacted in the reigns of Edward III, Richard II, even when, on the invention of gunpowder and firearms, the bow had fallen into disuse as a weapon of war, the prohibition was continued. The word bowls occurs for the first time in the statute of 1511 in which Henry VIII confirmed previous enactments against unlawful games and it was further enjoined that any one playing bowls outside his own garden or orchard was liable to a penalty of 6s. While those possessed of lands of the value of £100 might obtain licences to play on their own private greens. Young Mitchell was only 11 when he played on Kilmarnock Bowling green and this is turn led to the codification of modern rules for many sports, including lawn bowls, most football codes, lawn tennis and others. National Bowling Associations were established in the late 1800s, today the sport is played in over 40 countries with more than 50 member national authorities. The home of the game is still Scotland with the World Bowls centre in Edinburgh at Caledonia House,1 Redheughs Rigg, South Gyle, Edinburgh. Lawn bowls is played on a large, rectangular, precisely levelled and manicured grass or synthetic surface known as a bowling green which is divided into parallel playing strips called rinks. Once it has come to rest, the jack is aligned to the centre of the rink, a bowl may curve outside the rink boundary on its path, but must come to rest within the rink boundary to remain in play
26.
Shooting sports
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A shooting sport is a competitive sport involving tests of proficiency using various types of guns, such as firearms and airguns. Shooting sports are categorized by the type of firearm, target, for similar reasons, concerned over poor marksmanship during the American Civil War, veteran Union officers Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate formed the National Rifle Association of America in 1871 for the purpose of promoting and encouraging rifle shooting on a scientific basis. In 1872, with help from New York state, a site on Long Island. Named Creedmoor, the range opened in 1872, and became the site of the first National Matches until New York politics forced the NRA to move the matches to Sea Girt, New Jersey. The popularity of the National Matches soon forced the event to be moved to its present, much larger location, Camp Perry. In 1903, the U. S. Congress created the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice, the NBPRP also participates in the National Matches at Camp Perry. In 1903, the NRA began to establish rifle clubs at all colleges, universities. By 1906, youth programs were in full swing with more than 200 boys competing in the National Matches, french pistol champion and founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, participated in many of these early competitions. This fact certainly contributed to the inclusion of five shooting events in the 1896 Olympics, over the years, the events have been changed a number of times in order to keep up with technology and social standards. The targets that formerly resembled humans or animals in their shape, at the same time, some events have been dropped and new ones have been added. The 2004 Olympics featured three shooting disciplines where athletes competed for 51 medals in 10 mens and 7 womens events—slightly fewer than the previous Olympic schedule, the Olympic Games continue to provide the shooting sports with its greatest public relations opportunity. The sport has always enjoyed the distinction of awarding the first medals of the Games, internationally, the International Shooting Sport Federation has oversight of all Olympic shooting events worldwide, while National Governing Bodies administer the sport within each country. Having originally established shooting as a sport in the USA. The NRA dutifully managed and financially supported international and conventional shooting sports for over 100 years until the formation of USA Shooting, modern competitive archery involves shooting arrows at a target for accuracy from a set distance or distances. A person who participates in archery is called an archer or a bowman—and a person who is fond of or an expert at archery is sometimes called a toxophilite. The most popular competitions worldwide are called target archery, another form, particularly popular in Europe and America, is field archery, which generally is shot at targets set at various distances in a wooded setting. There are also several other lesser-known and historical forms, as well as archery novelty games, note that the tournament rules vary from organization to organization
27.
NBA Ballers
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NBA Ballers is a streetball game which is similar to AND1 Streetball and gameplay similar to the NBA Jam series. The game features fictional NBA analyst Bob Benson and MC Supernatural doing the commentary, Supernatural makes many references to the Mortal Kombat series and NFL Blitz, two games published by Midway. The game also maintains the player on fire feature that is in many, most of the moves that were in the game were from real street ballers who provided some of their moves for the game. The game is powered by Gamespy game technology, the game was followed by a version for the PlayStation Portable, NBA Ballers, Rebound and a sequel, NBA Ballers, Phenom. Others can be 1-on-1-on-1, meaning you have three players each playing solely for themselves, the matches are 2 minutes in length and winner is the best of three rounds, each round being a game to 11 points where the winner must win by at least two points. If time runs out, the player with the most points will be declared the winner of that round, Juice Meter In gameplay the player has a Juice Meter that fills up like a fuel gauge and it is used at the turbo boost meter. It is the energy and if it used up the meter will diminish. House Meter The second meter below the Juice Meter is the House Meter which is raised by pulling off style moves, the meter is filled until the word HOUSE is spelled. When totally filled, the player may choose to Bring Down the House by holding all shoulder buttons and throwing an alley-oop to himself that tears down the rim and ends the match. Each match is done by tournament style and the player must defeat every opponent to advance to a new tournament to move the story along and this game mode featured a full story told over 21 different cut scenes as the player progressed throughout the game. With the inclusion of this mode, NBA Ballers became the first video game officially licensed by a league to contain a story mode
28.
English compound
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A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme. The English language, like others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the classes or the semantic relationship of their components. Most English compound nouns are noun phrases that include a noun modified by adjectives or noun adjuncts, due to the English tendency towards conversion, the two classes are not always easily distinguished. Most English compound nouns that consist of more than two words can be constructed recursively by combining two words at a time, combining science and fiction, and then combining the resulting compound with writer, for example, can construct the compound science fiction writer. As in other Germanic languages, the compounds may be arbitrarily long, however, this is obscured by the fact that the written representation of long compounds always contains spaces. Solid compounds most likely consist of units that often have been established in the language for a long time. Examples are housewife, lawsuit, wallpaper, basketball, etc, the hyphenated form in which two or more words are connected by a hyphen. Compounds that contain affixes, such as house-build and single-mind, as well as adjective-adjective compounds and verb-verb compounds, such as blue-green, compounds that contain articles, prepositions or conjunctions, such as rent-a-cop, mother-of-pearl and salt-and-pepper, are also often hyphenated. The open or spaced form consisting of combinations of usually longer words, such as distance learning, player piano, lawn tennis. In general, the meaning of a noun is a specialization of the meaning of its head. The modifier limits the meaning of the head and this is most obvious in descriptive compounds, in which the modifier is used in an attributive or appositional manner. A blackboard is a kind of board, which is black. In determinative compounds, however, the relationship is not attributive, for example, a footstool is not a particular type of stool that is like a foot. Rather, it is a stool for ones foot or feet, in a similar manner, an office manager is the manager of an office, an armchair is a chair with arms, and a raincoat is a coat against the rain. These relationships, which are expressed by prepositions in English, would be expressed by grammatical case in other languages, however, in another common type of compound, the exocentric or, the semantic head is not explicitly expressed. A redhead, for example, is not a kind of head, similarly, a blockhead is also not a head, but a person with a head that is as hard and unreceptive as a block. And a lionheart is not a type of heart, but a person with a heart like a lion, note in general the way to tell the two apart, Can you paraphrase the meaning of the compound to A person/thing that is a Y, or
29.
Skipping rope
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A skipping rope or jump rope is a tool used in the sport of jump rope where one or more participants jump over a rope swung so that it passes under their feet and over their heads. There are multiple subsets of jump rope including, single freestyle, single speed, pairs, the events are often separated by gender and age. There are hundreds of competitive teams all around the world, there are a few major organisations that support jump rope as a sport as seen below. In freestyle events, jumpers use a variety of basic and advanced techniques in a routine of one minute, which is judged by a judge, content judges. In speed events, a jumper alternates their feet with the rope going around the jumper every time one of their feet hit the ground for 30 seconds, one minute, the jumper is judged on the number of times the right foot touches the ground in those times. There are many techniques which can be used when skipping and these can be used individually, or combined in a series, to create a routine. Jump with both feet slightly apart over the rope, beginners usually master this technique first before moving onto more advanced techniques. Use alternate feet to jump off the ground and this technique can be used to effectively double the number of jumps per minute as compared to the above technique. This step can be used for speed events, also known as Crossover or cross arms. Perform the basic jump whilst crossing arms in front of the body, the rope is passed by the side of the participants body, without jumping it. Perform the criss-cross whilst crossing one arm behind the back, a high basic jump, turning the rope twice under the feet. Turning the rope three times is called a triple under, in competitions, participants may attempt quadruple and quintuple unders using the same method. Perform the criss-cross with one arm crossing under the leg from the inside. A basic jump with one arm hooked under the adjacent leg, also known as Awesome Anna or swish. Alternates between a leg over and a toad without a jump in between, perform the toad whilst one arm crosses the adjacent leg from the outside. A cross between the inverse toad and the toad, with both arms crossing under one leg, the participant does a handstand, returns to their feet and turns the rope under them. A more advanced version turns the rope during the return to the ground, the participant performs a backflip into a split and then back to a skip in the upright position. In competitions, participants are required to demonstrate competence using specific techniques, the selection required depend on the judging system and country in which the tournament is held
30.
Sport
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Usually the contest or game is between two sides, each attempting to exceed the other. Some sports allow a tie game, others provide tie-breaking methods, to one winner. A number of such two-sided contests may be arranged in a tournament producing a champion, many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs. Hundreds of sports exist, from those between single contestants, through to those with hundreds of participants, either in teams or competing as individuals. In certain sports such as racing, many contestants may compete, each against each other, however, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. Sports are usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition, winning can be determined by physical events such as scoring goals or crossing a line first. It can also be determined by judges who are scoring elements of the sporting performance, records of performance are often kept, and for popular sports, this information may be widely announced or reported in sport news. Sport is also a source of entertainment for non-participants, with spectator sport drawing large crowds to sport venues. Sports betting is in some cases severely regulated, and in some cases is central to the sport, kearney, a consultancy, the global sporting industry is worth up to $620 billion as of 2013. The worlds most accessible and practised sport is running, while football is the most popular spectator sport. The word Sport comes from the Old French desport meaning leisure, other meanings include gambling and events staged for the purpose of gambling, hunting, and games and diversions, including ones that require exercise. Rogets defines the noun sport as an activity engaged in for relaxation, the singular term sport is used in most English dialects to describe the overall concept, with sports used to describe multiple activities. American English uses sports for both terms, the precise definition of what separates a sport from other leisure activities varies between sources. They also recognise that sport can be physical, primarily mind, predominantly motorised, primarily co-ordination. The inclusion of sports within sport definitions has not been universally accepted. Whilst SportAccord recognises a number of mind sports, it is not open to admitting any further mind sports. According to Council of Europe, European Sports Charter, article 2, other bodies advocate widening the definition of sport to include all physical activity. For instance, the Council of Europe include all forms of physical exercise, in competitive events, participants are graded or classified based on their result and often divided into groups of comparable performance
31.
Eggplant
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Eggplant, or aubergine, is a species of nightshade grown for its edible fruit. Eggplant is the name in North America and Australia. It is known in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Africa as brinjal, the fruit is widely used in cooking. As a member of the genus Solanum, it is related to the tomato and it was originally domesticated from the wild nightshade species, the thorn or bitter apple, S. incanum, probably with two independent domestications, one in South Asia and one in East Asia. The eggplant is a delicate, tropical perennial often cultivated as a tender or half-hardy annual in temperate climates, the flower is white to purple, with a five-lobed corolla and yellow stamens. The egg-shaped, glossy, purple fruit has white flesh with a meaty texture, the cut surface of the flesh rapidly turns brown when the fruit is cut open. It grows 40 to 150 cm tall, with large, coarsely lobed leaves that are 10 to 20 cm long and 5 to 10 cm broad, semiwild types can grow much larger, to 225 cm with large leaves over 30 cm long and 15 cm broad. On wild plants, the fruit is less than 3 cm in diameter, botanically classified as a berry, the fruit contains numerous small, soft seeds that, though edible, taste bitter because they contain nicotinoid alkaloids like the related tobacco. The plant species originated in cultivation and it has been cultivated in southern and eastern Asia since prehistory. The first known record of the plant is found in Qimin Yaoshu. A book on agriculture by Ibn Al-Awwam in 12th-century Arabic Spain described how to grow aubergines, records exist from later medieval Catalan and Spanish. The aubergine is unrecorded in England until the 16th century, an English botany book in 1597 stated, This plant groweth in Egypt almost everywhere. Bringing forth fruit of the bigness of a great cucumber, but never to the full ripeness. Because of the relationship with other nightshades, the fruit was at one time believed to be extremely poisonous. The flowers and leaves can be poisonous if consumed in large due to the presence of solanine. The eggplant has a place in folklore. In 13th-century Italian traditional folklore, the eggplant can cause insanity, in 19th-century Egypt, insanity was said to be more common and more violent when the eggplant is in season in the summer. The plant and fruit have a profusion of English names, eggplant, aubergine, brinjal, melongene, and formerly melongena and mad-apple
32.
Zucchini
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Zucchini or courgette is a summer squash which can reach nearly a meter in length, but is usually harvested immature at 15 to 25 cm. In the British Isles, a fully grown zucchini is referred to as a marrow, along with certain other squashes and pumpkins, it belongs to the species Cucurbita pepo. Zucchini can be dark or light green, a related hybrid, the golden zucchini, is a deep yellow or orange color. In a culinary context, zucchini is treated as a vegetable, botanically, zucchinis are fruits, a type of botanical berry called a pepo, being the swollen ovary of the zucchini flower. Zucchini, like all squash, has its ancestry in the Americas, in the United States, Australia and Germany, the plant is commonly called a zucchini, from Italian, zucchina, diminutive of zucca, gourd, marrow, pumpkin, squash. In the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand, a fully-grown, in South Africa, the fruit is typically harvested as a baby vegetable, approximately finger size, and is referred to as “baby marrows”. The female flower is a golden blossom on the end of each emergent zucchini, the male flower grows directly on the stem of the zucchini plant in the leaf axils, on a long stalk, and is slightly smaller than the female. Both flowers are edible and are used to dress a meal or to garnish the cooked fruit. Firm and fresh blossoms that are slightly open are cooked to be eaten, with pistils removed from female flowers. There are a variety of recipes in which the flowers may be fried as fritters or tempura, stuffed, sautéed, baked. Zucchini, like all squash, has its ancestry in the Americas, however, the varieties of green, cylindrical squash harvested immature and typically called zucchini were developed in northern Italy, long after the introduction of cucurbits from the Americas. Its been cultivated in north of Iran too known as Kachelik, the word zucchini and this culinary variety of C. pepo arose independently and simultaneously in 19th-century Tuscany and northern Italy. Zucca is the Italian word for pumpkin/squash and zucchino/zucchina are diminutive forms, zucchino, the masculine form, is the first form to be documented in writing. The Treccani, Istituto dellEnciclopedia italiana, another highly respected authority, gives zucchina as the main Italian word. Zucchini is used in Italy, Australia, Canada, and the United States, Zucchini is one of the plural forms in English, as well as the singular form. The first records of zucchini in the United States date to the early 1920s and it was almost certainly brought over by Italian immigrants and probably was first cultivated in the United States in California. A1928 report on vegetables grown in New York State treats Zucchini as one among 60 cultivated varieties of C. pepo, when used for food, zucchini are usually picked when under 20 cm in length, when the seeds are still soft and immature. Mature zucchini can be as large as a baseball bat, the larger ones are often fibrous
33.
Coriander
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Coriander, also known as cilantro or Chinese parsley, is an annual herb in the family Apiaceae. All parts of the plant are edible, but the fresh leaves, Coriander is native to regions spanning from southern Europe and northern Africa to southwestern Asia. It is a plant growing to 50 cm tall. The leaves are variable in shape, broadly lobed at the base of the plant, the flowers are borne in small umbels, white or very pale pink, asymmetrical, with the petals pointing away from the center of the umbel longer than those pointing toward it. The fruit is a globular, dry schizocarp 3–5 mm in diameter, the earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek ko-ri-ja-da-na written in Linear B syllabic script which later evolved to koriannon or koriandron. Cilantro is the Spanish word for coriander, also deriving from coriandrum and it is the common term in North American English for coriander leaves, due to their extensive use in Mexican cuisine. Coriander grows wild over an area of Western Asia and southern Europe, prompting the comment, It is hard to define exactly where this plant is wild. Fifteen desiccated mericarps were found in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B level of the Nahal Hemar Cave in Israel, Coriander seems to have been cultivated in Greece since at least the second millennium BC. Coriander was brought to the British colonies in North America in 1670, all parts of the plant are edible, but the fresh leaves and the dried seeds are the parts most traditionally used in cooking. Coriander is used in cuisines throughout the world, the leaves are variously referred to as coriander leaves, fresh coriander, dhania, Chinese parsley, or cilantro. Coriander potentially may be confused with culantro, an Apiaceae like coriander, culantro has a distinctly different spiny appearance, a more potent volatile leaf oil and a stronger aroma. The leaves have a different taste from the seeds, with citrus overtones, however, some people find the leaves to have an unpleasant soapy taste or a rank smell and avoid them. Chopped coriander leaves are a garnish on Indian dishes such as dal, as heat diminishes their flavour, coriander leaves are often used raw or added to the dish immediately before serving. In Indian and Central Asian recipes, coriander leaves are used in large amounts, the leaves spoil quickly when removed from the plant, and lose their aroma when dried or frozen. The dry fruits are known as coriander seeds, the word coriander in food preparation may refer solely to these seeds, rather than to the plant. The seeds have a citrus flavour when crushed, due to terpenes linalool. It is described as warm, nutty, spicy, and orange-flavoured and they are used extensively for grinding and blending purposes in the spice trade. Types with smaller fruit are produced in regions and usually have a volatile oil content around 0. 4-1. 8%
34.
Chamomile
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Chamomile or camomile is the common name for several daisy-like plants of the family Asteraceae that are commonly used to make herb infusions to serve various medicinal purposes. Popular uses of chamomile preparations include treating hay fever, inflammation, muscle spasms, menstrual disorders, insomnia, ulcers, gastrointestinal disorders, camomile tea is also used to treat skin conditions such as eczema, chickenpox and psoriasis. The word chamomile derives, via French and Latin, from Greek χαμαίμηλον, i. e. earth apple, from χαμαί on the ground and μῆλον apple. The more common British spelling camomile, is the one in English, while the spelling chamomile corresponds to the Latin. The spelling camomile more accurately corresponds to the more immediate derivation from French, a number of other species common names include the word chamomile. This does not mean they are used in the manner as the species used in the herbal tea known as chamomile. There are two types of chamomile that are used to produce the infusion, German chamomile and Roman chamomile. Chamomile tea is said to be a digestive relaxant, German Chamomile has been used for treatment of inflammation associated with hemorrhoids when topically applied. There is level B evidence that German chamomile possesses anti-anxiety properties and could be used to treat stress, major chemical compounds present within chamomile include apigenin and alpha-bisabolol. Anticoagulant effect – Coumarin compounds in chamomile such as herniarin and umbelliferone may have blood-thinning properties, however, the mechanism is not well understood. Antispasmodic/antidiarrheal effects – Bisabolol and flavonoids have demonstrated antispasmodic effects in animal experiments, in human studies, chamomile tea in combination with other herbs was shown to be effective in treating colic in children. Flavonoids and coumarins are considered smooth muscle relaxants, cNS/sensory effects - Chemical compounds present within chamomile bind to GABA receptors, modulate monoamine neurotransmission, and have neuroendocrine effects. Apigenin was found to interact with agents and antihypertensive agents in animal research. Other interactions include those against sedative agents, antibiotic agents, remarkable symptoms are exacerbation of effects of these agents that are used in combination with chamomile. Chamomile consists of several ingredients including coumarin, glycoside, heniarin, flavonoid, farnesol, nerolidol, however, until more information is available, it is not recommended to use these substances concurrently. People who are allergic to ragweed may also be allergic to chamomile, however, there is still some debate as to whether people with reported allergies to chamomile were actually exposed to chamomile and not a plant of similar appearance. Chamomile is frequently added to skin cosmetics to serve as an emollient, Chamomile is also often used to enhance the color of blonde hair. The chamomile plant is known to be susceptible to fungi, insects
