A Band Of Brothers essays

A Band Of Brothers essays This book takes the reader on a great journey, one filled with excitement and sadness. The reader is a rifleman in Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army, the greatest rifle company in the world. It all starts at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, then escalates to D-Day (Their first combat jump), and then to Hitlers Eagles Nest at Berchtesgaden. Basic Training at Fort Toccoa was the toughest BT in the Armed Forces. At Toccoa, they took in baby-faced recruits and turned them into lean, mean killing machines. Each of the 140 men and 7 officers who had come to Ft. Toccoa had either been an athlete or a hunter in high school. Toccoa was so tough that many of the OFFICERS didnt make it through there. The instructors in Georgia were very tough on these men. They knew that they had to be in supreme physical condition, or else they would never survive. To get these men in top physical condition, the drill sergeants ran the men up and down a hill that they called Currahee (Indian for We stand alone.) This hill was 3 miles up and 3 miles back. The men ran this hill at least once a day, if not twice. By the time the men shipped out of Georgia 8 weeks later, they were in the best fighting shape of their lives. On the night of June 6, 1944, the men from Easy Company loaded up into 8 c-47 carrier planes. Flying over Normandy, many planes were hit and began to go down, so men had to jump from 250 feet while going 150 miles an hour. When they actually hit the ground, many of the men could not find their gear and had to sometimes make do with just a field knife. As the men landed, (they were scattered about 5 miles apart, as the planes had been blown off course by the Anti-Aircraft fire.) they tried to group together in bands and make their way to the rallying point. Many men were killed, because they would accidentally walk right into a German ma ...

The Latin Word for Breathe Inspired Many English Terms

The Latin Word for Breathe Inspired Many English Terms The Latin Word for Breathe Inspired Many English Terms The Latin Word for Breathe Inspired Many English Terms By Mark Nichol The Latin verb spirare, meaning â€Å"breathe,† is the source of a number of verbs (and other parts of speech). Here’s a summary of these words and their meanings. Aspire literally means â€Å"breathe on†; the connotation is that one breathes heavily with the exertion of aspiring to a goal. The modern sense of aspire is â€Å"try to be or do something,† and the noun form aspirant refers to someone who is a candidate or contestant. To conspire (the word literally means â€Å"breath together†) is to plot, or plan a scheme with others. Plotters are also called conspirators, and conspiracy is a synonym for plot. Expire means â€Å"breathe out† but usually connotes the end of an offer or of a product’s shelf life; the noun form is expiration. (In Latin, expirare also meant â€Å"die,† and this sense carried over into English, although it is now rare.) The literal meaning of inspire is â€Å"breathe in†; the figurative sense derived from the idea that a deity breathes life into a mortal. The verb and the noun now chiefly pertain to that sense- of having an emotion or a feeling that prompts one to create or to cause something to happen. (An inspiration can also be someone or something that has a role in the accomplishment of a creative act or an event.) Perspire, meaning â€Å"breathe through,† is associated with the production of sweat; the noun form is perspiration. The verb respire (literally, â€Å"breathe again†) is rare, but the noun form respiration, which refers to the breathing cycle of inhaling oxygen into the body and exhaling carbon dioxide, is common. Suspire (literally, â€Å"breathe under†) is a rare synonym for sigh. Transpire, which literally means â€Å"breathe (or evaporate) across,† refers to evaporation of water from leaves (a process called transpiration) but has, by extension, come to mean â€Å"become known† as well as â€Å"happen† or â€Å"occur,† now the predominant senses of the word. Two technical terms derived from the Latin root are spirant, a linguistic term for a breathy consonant, and spirometer, the name of a device for measuring lung capacity; the principle is called spirometry. Finally, a related term is spirit. The word has multiple meanings: It became associated with divine power (see the reference to the figurative sense of inspire above) and, by extension, came to pertain to one’s character or nature, or the essential principle of something, and to denote courage, enthusiasm, or vigor. (Also based on the supernatural sense, it serves as a synonym for ghost.) In addition, it acquired in alchemy an association with volatile substances and ultimately came to be applied to alcoholic beverages. (Spire, referring to a tapering element such as the pinnacle of a tower, comes from an unrelated word for a sharp point; spear, however, is cognate with spire. Spiral, likewise, is unrelated both to the -spire family of words and to spire and spear.) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Using "a" and "an" Before Words7 Tips for Writing a Film ReviewApostrophe with Plural Possessive Nouns