Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

brier

(Encyclopedia)brier or briar, name sometimes given any thorny plant, more specifically the sweetbrier, and the greenbrier. French brier, or brierroot, is a name for the root of the European white heath so widely us...

stoat

(Encyclopedia)stoat stōt [key], European name for the short-tailed weasel, Mustela erminea, also called ermine when in its white winter phase. ...

Dare, Virginia

(Encyclopedia)Dare, Virginia, b. 1587, first white child of English parents to be born in America. She was the daughter of Ananias and Elenor Dare, members of Sir Walter Raleigh's ill-fated colony that settled Roan...

Collins, Eddie

(Encyclopedia)Collins, Eddie (Edward Trowbridge Collins), 1887–1951, American baseball player, b. Millerton, N.Y., grad. Columbia, 1907. One of the game's great second basemen, he was active in the American Leagu...

Estremoz

(Encyclopedia)Estremoz ĕshtrəmôshˈ [key], town, Évora dist., S central Portugal, in Alto Alentejo. It ...

Iztaccíhuatl

(Encyclopedia)Iztaccíhuatl both: ēshˌ– [key] [Nahuatl,=white woman], dormant volcano, 17,160 ft (5,230 m) high, central Mexico, on the border between Puebla and Mexico state. Irregular in outline, and snowcapp...

antithesis

(Encyclopedia)antithesis ăntĭthˈĭsĭs [key], a figure of speech involving a seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses, or sentences within a balanced grammatical structure. Parallelism of expression serves...

Hartley, David

(Encyclopedia)Hartley, David, 1705–57, English physician and philosopher, founder of associational psychology. In his Observations on Man (2 vol., 1749) he stated that all mental phenomena are due to sensations a...

Frascati

(Encyclopedia)Frascati fräskäˈtē [key], town, in Latium, central Italy. Beautifully situated in the Alban ...

Jameson, Storm

(Encyclopedia)Jameson, Storm (Margaret Storm Jameson), 1891–1986, English novelist and critic, b. Whitby, Yorkshire, grad. Leeds Univ., 1912. Descended from a shipbuilding family, she drew on her knowledge of tha...

Browse by Subject