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garnet

(Encyclopedia)garnet, name applied to a group of isomorphic minerals crystallizing in the cubic system. They are used chiefly as gems and as abrasives (as in garnet paper). The garnets are double silicates; one of ...

Hoffa, Jimmy

(Encyclopedia)Hoffa, Jimmy (James Riddle Hoffa) hôfˈə [key], 1913–75?, U.S. labor leader, b. Brazil, Indiana. As a young warehouseman he organized (1932) a union that was admitted two years later into the Team...

pidgin

(Encyclopedia)pidgin pĭjˈən [key], a lingua franca that is not the mother tongue of anyone using it and that has a simplified grammar and a restricted, often polyglot vocabulary. The earliest documented pidgin i...

Atlantic Ocean

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Atlantic Ocean [Lat.,=of Atlas], second largest ocean (c.31,800,000 sq mi/82,362,000 sq km; c.36,000,000 sq mi/93,240,000 sq km with marginal seas). The North Atlantic Ocean has some of the w...

Metropolitan Opera Company

(Encyclopedia)Metropolitan Opera Company, term used in referring collectively to the organizations that have produced opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City. The original house, at West 39th Street an...

megachurch

(Encyclopedia)megachurch, large Protestant church with an average weekly attendance of 2,000 or more; relatively uncommon until after 1970. In the United States, where most megachurches are located, there were more...

conch

(Encyclopedia)conch kŏngk, kŏnch, kôngk [key], common name for certain marine gastropod mollusks having a heavy, spiral shell, the whorls of which overlap each other. In conchs the characteristic gastropod foot ...

Confederate cruisers

(Encyclopedia)Confederate cruisers, in U.S. history, warships constituting the South's seagoing navy. At the outbreak of the Civil War the United States ranked next to Great Britain in merchant marine. Since almost...

Oporto

(Encyclopedia)Oporto o͝opôrˈtō [key], Port. Pôrto, city (1991 pop. 310,600), capital of Porto dist. and Douro Litoral, NW Portugal, near the mouth of the Douro River. It is Portugal's second largest city, afte...

opossum

(Encyclopedia)opossum əpŏsˈəm, pŏsˈ– [key], name for several marsupials, or pouched mammals, of the family Didelphidae, native to Central and South America, with one species extending N to the United States...