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Hurston, Zora Neale

(Encyclopedia)Hurston, Zora Neale, 1891?–60, African-American writer, b. Notasulga, Ala. She grew up in the pleasant all-black town of Eatonville, Fla., and graduated from Barnard College, where she studied with ...

Gond

(Encyclopedia)Gond gŏnd [key], ethnic group of central India. The group is now found especially in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and in neighboring areas of Maharashtra, Telangana, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Uttar P...

Panini

(Encyclopedia)Panini päˈnēnē [key], fl. c.400 b.c., Indian grammarian. His Ashtādhyāyī [eight books] (tr. 1891) is one of the earliest works of descriptive linguistics and is also the first individually auth...

Jim Crow laws

(Encyclopedia)Jim Crow laws, in U.S. history, statutes enacted by Southern states and municipalities, beginning in the 1880s, that legalized segregation between blacks and whites. The name is believed to be derived...

Rochester, John Wilmot, 2d earl of

(Encyclopedia)Rochester, John Wilmot, 2d earl of, 1647–80, English poet and courtier, b. Ditchley, Oxfordshire. Most notorious and dissolute of the Restoration rakes, he lost the favor of Charles II on several oc...

Lindsay, John Vliet

(Encyclopedia)Lindsay, John Vliet vlēt [key], 1921–2000, American politician, mayor of New York City (1966–73), b. New York City. He practiced law and then served (1955–57) as executive assistant to Attorney...

Tilak, Bal Gangadhar

(Encyclopedia)Tilak, Bal Gangadhar bäl gŭngˈgədär tēˈläk [key], 1856–1920, Indian nationalist leader. He was a journalist in Pune, and in his newspapers, the Marathi-language Kesari [lion] and the English...

Anderson, Carl David

(Encyclopedia)Anderson, Carl David ănˈdərsən [key], 1905–91, American physicist, b. New York City, grad. California Institute of Technology (B.S., 1927; Ph.D., 1930). Associated with the institute's physics d...

Ives, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Ives, Charles īvz [key], 1874–1954, American composer and organist, b. Danbury, Conn., grad. Yale, 1898; pupil of Dudley Buck and Horatio Parker. He was an organist (1893–1904) in churches in Con...

limerick, in poetry

(Encyclopedia)limerick, type of humorous verse. It is always short, often nonsensical, and sometimes ribald. Of unknown origin, the limerick is popular rather than literary and has even been used in advertising. Th...