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Kiowa

(Encyclopedia)Kiowa kīˈəwə [key], Native North Americans whose language is thought to form a branch of the Aztec-Tanoan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). The Kiowa, a nomadic people of the Plain...

Rushdie, Sir Salman

(Encyclopedia)Rushdie, Sir Salman sälmänˈ ro͞oshˈdē [key], 1947–, British novelist, b. Bombay (now Mumbai, India). He is known for the allusive richness of his language and the wide variety of Eastern and W...

Boas, Franz

(Encyclopedia)Boas, Franz bōˈăz, –ăs [key], 1858–1942, German-American anthropologist, b. Minden, Germany, Ph.D. Univ. of Kiel, 1881. He joined an expedition to Baffin Island in 1883 and initiated his field...

oratory

(Encyclopedia)oratory, the art of swaying an audience by eloquent speech. In ancient Greece and Rome oratory was included under the term rhetoric, which meant the art of composing as well as delivering a speech. Or...

orders of architecture

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Orders of architecture orders of architecture. In classical tyles of architecture the various columnar types fall, in general, into the five so-called classical orders, which are named Doric, ...

Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich

(Encyclopedia)Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich ĭlyēchˈ chīkôfˈskē [key], 1840–93, Russian composer, b. Kamsko-Votkinsk. Variant transliterations of his name include Tschaikovsky and Chaikovsky. He is a towering f...

Ur

(Encyclopedia)Ur ûr [key], ancient city of Sumer, S Mesopotamia. The city is also known as Ur of the Chaldees. It was an important center of Sumerian culture (see Sumer) and is identified in the Bible as the home ...

Damascus

(Encyclopedia)Damascus dəmăsˈkəs [key], Arabic Dimashq or ash-Sham, city (1995 est. pop. 1,500,000), capital of Syria and of its Damascus governorate, SW Syria, on the eastern edge of the Anti-Lebanon Mts. It i...

Paine, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Paine, Thomas, 1737–1809, Anglo-American political theorist and writer, b. Thetford, Norfolk, England. The son of a working-class Quaker, he became an excise officer and was dismissed from the servi...

Winchester, cities, United States

(Encyclopedia)Winchester wĭnˈchĕˌstər, wĭnˈchĭstər [key]. 1 Town (1990 pop. 11,524), Litchfield co., NW Conn., in the Litchfield Hills; settled 1732, inc. 1771. It includes Winsted (1990 pop. 8,254), an in...