Yea! We've just had the Budget announced in Australia, to the inevitable wailing of baffled interest groups and the whirring of spin placed on it by competing political groups. Did... read more
Read all the latest news!
This Week's Cash Prize Winner
PommiePete
623,271
49
Member since
03-12-2011
$100.00
Turn your tokens into cash!
Word of the day golden hello
by Christine Lovatt
"Doctors are set for 'golden hellos' to lure them into general practice under new plans to tackle a shortage of GPs."
A golden hello is a substantial payment made by an employer to a keenly sought recruit. The above quote is taken from an article about doctors who are also offered a golden handcuff, a payment to encourage doctors approaching retirement to stay in practice.
Visit the Players Lounge
Word Fact
by The Quizzard
In Old English, the word WITH meant 'against'. This meaning is still preserved in phrases such as 'to fight with'
Victor Hugo's Les Miserables contains one of the longest SENTENCES in the French language -- 823 words without a full stop
CANVAS, because it was made from hemp, gets its name from the Latin word 'cannabis'
QUARANTINE comes from the Italian word for a 40-day period, 'quarantena, since ships carrying diseases were isolated for that period
A British translation company was voted SERENDIPITY one of the ten hardest words to translate
Of the 250,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, half are nouns, a quarter are adjectives and 15 percent are verbs
W is the only letter in the alphabet that does not have just one syllable
A silver mine in Joachimstal (now in the Czech Republic) began minting a coin in 1519 called the 'Joachimstaler'. This became the 'taler' which the Germans called a 'daler' and we call the DOLLAR
Flight recorders BLACK BOXES are usually orange in colour but derive their name from wartime aircraft radar gun sights
George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, is responsible for first publishing the expression COLD WAR