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executive order

(Encyclopedia)executive order, in the United States, official document initiated and signed by the president containing directives concerning how the executive branch shall carry out its responsibilities under the ...

executors and administrators

(Encyclopedia)executors and administrators. An executor is the person designated in the will of a deceased person to carry out the provisions of the will. An administrator is the person appointed by a probate court...

typewriter

(Encyclopedia)typewriter, instrument for producing by manual operation characters similar to those of printing. Corresponding to each key on the instrument's keyboard is a steel type. Activated through a series of ...

Poison Affair

(Encyclopedia)Poison Affair, in French history, scandal implicating a number of prominent persons at the court of King Louis XIV. It began with the trial of Marie Madeleine d'Aubray, marquise de Brinvilliers (c.163...

orangutan

(Encyclopedia)orangutan ōrăngˈo͝otăn [key], an ape of the genus Pongo, found in rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. Highly specialized for arboreal life, orangutans usually travel by grasping branches with han...

Flynn, Michael Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Flynn, Michael Thomas, 1958–, U.S. military officer and government official, b. Middletown, R.I., Univ. of Rhode Island (B.S., 1981). Commissioned as ...

herpes simplex

(Encyclopedia)herpes simplex hûrˈpēz [key], an acute viral infection of the skin characterized by one or more painful, itching blisters filled with clear fluid. It is caused by either of two herpes simplex virus...

Hirst, Damien Steven

(Encyclopedia)Hirst, Damien Steven, 1965–, British artist-provacateur, b. Bristol. While at Goldsmiths College, London (grad. 1988), he organized the exhibition Freeze, whose participants, led by Hirst, became kn...

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...

key, in music

(Encyclopedia)key. 1 In music, term used to indicate the scale from which the tonal material of a given composition is derived. To say, for example, that a composition is in the key of C major means that it uses as...