Columbia Encyclopedia

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credit, letter of

(Encyclopedia)credit, letter of, commercial instrument through which a bank or other financial institution instructs a correspondent institution to advance a specified sum of money to the bearer. The document is ca...

conscience

(Encyclopedia)conscience, sense of moral awareness or of right and wrong. The concept has been variously explained by moralists and philosophers. In the history of ethics, the conscience has been looked upon as the...

classical swine fever

(Encyclopedia)classical swine fever or hog cholera, acute, highly infectious viral disease of swine, historically perhaps the most serious disease of swine in North America. It is characterized by dullness and list...

fetish

(Encyclopedia)fetish fĕtˈĭsh [key], inanimate object believed to possess some magical power. The fetish may be a natural thing, such as a stone, a feather, a shell, or the claw of an animal, or it may be artific...

separation

(Encyclopedia)separation, in law, either the voluntary agreement of husband and wife to live apart or a partial dissolution of the marriage relation by court order. The marriage bond remains, and remarriage of eith...

sidereal time

(Encyclopedia)sidereal time (ST), time measured relative to the fixed stars; thus, the sidereal day is the period during which the earth completes one rotation on its axis so that some chosen star appears twice on ...

short takeoff and landing aircraft

(Encyclopedia)short takeoff and landing aircraft (STOL), heavier-than-air craft, capable of rising from and descending to the ground with only a short length of runway, but incapable of doing so vertically. The pre...

Peter Damian, Saint

(Encyclopedia)Peter Damian, Saint dāˈmēən [key], Ital. Pietro Damiani, 1007?–1072, Italian reformer, Doctor of the Church, b. Ravenna. He became a Camaldolese monk at Fonte-Avellino (near Gubbio) and because ...

osprey

(Encyclopedia)osprey ŏsˈprē [key], common name for a fish-eating bird of prey found near water in most parts of the world. The osprey, or fish hawk, Pandion haliaetus, has brown upperparts and a grayish white he...

open education

(Encyclopedia)open education, also known as open classroom, type of educational reform. The central tenet of this informal system is that children want to learn and will do so naturally if left to their own initiat...