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    • Pricing
    • Why Plain English?
    • 🌟 Watch #500 🌟

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    • Pricing
    • Why Plain English?
    • 🌟 Watch #500 🌟
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    Lesson #534

    New Year's Day is on January 1History
    January 2, 2023

    Why we celebrate the new year on January 1

    Our current calendar is the Gregorian calendar and it's over 400 years old. But the basics (12 months, 365 days, leap years) have been in place for over two thousand years. A small change brought it closer into alignment with the astronomical year, but it's still not perfect. Plus, learn the English expression "seek to."

    Expression

    Seek to

    To "seek to" do something is to try to accomplish it.
    Exercise

    Exercises for Lesson 534

    Video

    But for

    Describe the reason why something is not true with with 'but for'
    Lingo

    Wrinkle

    A 'wrinkle' is a small detail or complication.
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    Forum Description

    You probably know what it means to have wrinkles on a shirt--or even on your face. (If you don't know yet, just wait a few years!) But "wrinkle" has a different meaning that you might not know about. If you have a plan or a complicated situation, a "wrinkle" is a small detail that makes the plan a little more difficult or complicated. The Gregorian calendar gives us a leap year every four years. Every four years, we have an extra day in February. You know that, right? But there's a wrinkle. Century years like 1800 and 1900 should be leap years, but they're not. Following the once-every-four-years pattern, 1900 should be a leap year, but it's not. That's a wrinkle with the Gregorian calendar--a small detail that makes things more complicated. Here's another wrinkle: century years divisible by 400 are leap years! So while 1700, 1800, 1900, and 2100 are not leap years, 1600 and 2000 are. Any time you have a small detail that complicates a bigger plan or situation, you have a wrinkle.
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