Kids Questions & Answers

A Tea Party protest is part of a series of anti-government protests being organized all over the US since early 2009 to express anger and frustration over government policy, which supposedly promotes wasteful expenditure by the government and leads to high taxes. The term is based on the historic Boston Tea Party of 1773, which opposed tea taxation imposed by …

A surgical strike is an attack using missiles, bombers or on the ground against certain specific targets. The strike is planned with surgical precision so they cause damage only to the planned targets and cause minimum damage to their surroundings. These attacks are usually carried out against terrorist camps, training grounds, or facilities such as power stations, armouries, etc. The …

Stupa’s are associated with the religion Buddhism. A stupa is a dome shaped mound of brick or stone covering a site or object sacred to Buddha. Many stupas are found in India, the birthplace of Buddhism about 2,500 years ago.

A staycation is a neologism in vogue, where a person or family stays home instead of taking expensive and stressful vacations to exotic locations. It is a new travel word and is very popular what with today’s recession and high prices. It could involve taking day trips in and around the city. Such a vacation could also include activities like …

When a player has no legal moves, it is not possible to proceed further in the game. This results in a stalemate, provided his king is not in check. The game is declared a draw when such a situation arises, no matter what advantage one side has over the other. Normally, when a stalemate happens, there are only a small …

A spoonerism is the interchange of the initial sounds of two words, for example, “he is a boiled sprat”. It is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched. It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency.

A Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) is an investment fund owned by a government. The funds invested through such funds are usually the proceeds of non-renewable natural resources or a higher return alternative to holding foreign currency. An SWF differs from government funds that invest in their own country as these are usually driven by the desire to direct the economy …

The global slumpometer is a yardstick economists use to measure the severity of the recession in various economies across the world. It takes into account unemployment, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross Domestic Income (GDI). To the average person, rising unemployment and pink slips mean a recession. While for many economists, a recession has arrived when there’s a dip in …

It is a fund set aside as a means to repay funds borrowed through a bond issue. The issuer makes periodic payments to a trustee who retires part of the issue by purchasing the bonds in the open market. Rather than the issuer repaying the entire principal of a bond issue on the maturity date, another company buys back a …

A sick-out is concerted action by a group of employees, who call in sick to protest against the company and its policies. It is meant to hold the company to ransom. In ordinary language, it is a strike to show the power they hold over the company’s working. It is a slightly more devious method than taking to the streets …