(family Acanthaceae)A genus of shrubs and perennial herbs, most of which are xeromorphic and have spiny leaves. Some species are cultivated as ornamentals. The upper lip of the corolla is lacking. ...
(1115/20–1180)English churchman and diplomat. A student of Abelard, John was one of the most learned of early medieval writers on moral and political matters. He was secretary to Theobald, archbishop ...
Of a fin or wing, the ratio of length to width. A high-aspect-ratio fin or wing tends to be long and thin, producing a high lift- or thrust-to-drag ratio.
1 To grub up the trees and underwood of forest land in order to convert the area to arable or pasture use.2 Land cleared in this way.3 Private farmland formed by the clearance of part of a wood, ...
A building stone; poorly jointed sandstone or limestone which can be worked easily in any direction. Compare dimension stone.
[Co]An outer wall protecting soldiers moving along a walkway around the top of a fort or town defences.
[Ge]A member of a politically or administratively defined community, having both rights and duties associated with that membership.
A long thin fish, Anguilla spp.; the European eel is A. anguilla, the conger eel is Conger myriaster. Eels live in rivers but go to sea to breed; to date, although elvers (young eels) have been ...
An ornamental design of four lobes or leaves as used in architectural tracery, resembling a flower or clover leaf.
(1858–1931)Australian actor and singer, daughter of actors Richard Stewart and Theodosia Yates Stirling. She made her debut aged 5 with Charles Kean in The Stranger in Melbourne in 1864 ...
A U.S. military reservation on the Hudson River in Orange county, New York, United States. West Point Academy, also known as the U.S. Military Academy, has been on the site since 1802.[...]
A wild fancy. In Greek mythology, a fire-breathing monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
Oceania, or the Pacific Islands region, includes Melanesia (the islands of black peoples), Polynesia (many islands), and Micronesia (small islands) over a vast area covering one third of the globe ...
Are societies or institutions for the cultivation and promotion of literature, the arts or science, or of some particular branch of science such as medicine, for example, the Académie de ...
Proverbial allusions to the snake focus on its venomous bite as representing a lurking danger; it is a type of deceit and treachery, as with reference to the fable by Aesop, in which the man who had ...
A historical document. The plural form is also applied to the place where such documents are housed, e.g. a county record office.
The appropriation of pre-existing materials that are ready-to-hand to create something new (Lévi-Strauss). This creation both reflects and constructs the bricoleur's identity. The term is widely used ...
Variety of chert, which occurs commonly as nodules and bands in chalk. It is deposited in the porous, permeable structures of sponge, diatom, and echinoid skeletons and also in burrows.
1 In analytical psychology, the mask or face that a person presents to the world, often derived from a sense of gender identity (as when a woman plays the role of a loyal wife), or a stage of ...
(linguistics) The smallest sound unit in a language. Meaningless in themselves, phonemes are the building-blocks of language. Changing one for another changes the meaning of a word, as with /p/ and ...