Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Peace Corps

(Encyclopedia)Peace Corps, agency of the U.S. government, whose purpose is to assist underdeveloped countries in meeting their needs for trained manpower. The Peace Corps was established in 1961 by executive order ...

Chickasaw

(Encyclopedia)Chickasaw chĭkˈəsô [key], Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Muskogean branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). They occupied N Mississippi an...

etymology

(Encyclopedia)etymology ĕtĭmŏlˈəjē [key], branch of linguistics that investigates the history, development, and origin of words. It was this study that chiefly revealed the regular relations of sounds in the ...

parallel processing

(Encyclopedia)parallel processing, the concurrent or simultaneous execution of two or more parts of a single computer program, at speeds far exceeding those of a conventional computer. Parallel processing requires ...

Hoopa

(Encyclopedia)Hoopa ho͞oˈpə [key], Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Athabascan branch of the Nadene linguistic stock (see Native American languages). In the 19th cent. they occupied the valle...

Hamilton, Sir William Rowan

(Encyclopedia)Hamilton, Sir William Rowan, 1805–65, Irish mathematician and astronomer, b. Dublin. A child prodigy, he had mastered 13 languages by the age of 13 and was still an undergraduate when he became prof...

Stockbridge, indigenous people of North America

(Encyclopedia)Stockbridge, Native North Americans of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). In the early 17th cent. they were known as the Housatonic and were part of the Mahican ...

Spokan

(Encyclopedia)Spokan or Spokane both: spōkănˈ [key], Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Salishan branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). In the early...

Baterson, Mary Catherine

(Encyclopedia)Bateson, Mary Catherine, 1939-2021, American linguist and anthropologist, b. New York City, grad. Radcliffe (BA,1960), Harvard (Ph.D., 1963). The daugh...

Weinreich, Uriel

(Encyclopedia)Weinreich, Uriel, 1926–67, Polish-American linguist, b. Vilnius, Poland (now in Lithuania), Ph.D. Columbia Univ., 1951. Weinreich taught linguistics at Columbia (1951–67) and is noted for his cont...