Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Persian language

(Encyclopedia)Persian language, member of the Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Indo-Iranian languages). The official language of Iran, it has about 38 millio...

tense

(Encyclopedia)tense [O.Fr., from Lat.,=time], in the grammar of many languages, a category of time distinctions expressed by any conjugated form of a verb. In Latin inflection the tense of a verb is indicated by a ...

Manhattan, indigenous people of North America

(Encyclopedia)Manhattan mănhătˈən [key], indigenous people of North America of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). They were a small tribe of the Wappinger Confederacy. The...

National Defense Education Act

(Encyclopedia)National Defense Education Act (NDEA), federal legislation passed in 1958 providing aid to education in the United States at all levels, public and private. NDEA was instituted primarily to stimulate ...

Moscow State University

(Encyclopedia)Moscow State University, at Moscow, Russia, officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State Univ.; founded 1755 as Moscow Univ. by the Russian scientist M. V. Lomonosov, renamed Moscow State Univ. after the R...

Harper, William Rainey

(Encyclopedia)Harper, William Rainey, 1856–1906, American educator and Hebrew scholar, b. New Concord, Ohio, grad. Muskingum College, 1870, Ph.D. Yale, 1875. The author of many texts on Hebrew language and litera...

Gesenius, Wilhelm

(Encyclopedia)Gesenius, Wilhelm vĭlˈhĕlm gāzāˈnyo͝os [key], 1786–1842, German Orientalist, one of the greatest Hebrew and biblical scholars. He is principally known for his Hebrew Grammar, which has been r...

Jones, Sir William

(Encyclopedia)Jones, Sir William, 1746–94, English philologist and jurist. Jones was celebrated for his understanding of jurisprudence and of Oriental languages. He published an Essay on the Law of Bailments (178...

Craigie, Sir William A.

(Encyclopedia)Craigie, Sir William A., 1867–1957, British lexicographer, b. Dundee, Scotland. Educated at the Univ. of St. Andrews, Craigie studied Scandinavian languages at Copenhagen before beginning in 1893 hi...

Shinn, Everett

(Encyclopedia)Shinn, Everett, 1876–1953, American painter and magazine illustrator, b. Woodstown, N.J., studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Moving to New York City, Shinn created a series of mur...