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coral

(Encyclopedia)coral, small, sedentary marine animal, related to the sea anemone but characterized by a skeleton of horny or calcareous material. The skeleton itself is also called coral. Although most corals form c...

caste

(Encyclopedia)caste [Port., casta=basket], ranked groups based on heredity within rigid systems of social stratification, especially those that constitute Hindu India. Some scholars, in fact, deny that true caste s...

Goto-retto

(Encyclopedia)Goto-retto gōtōˈ-rĕtˈtō [key], group of more than 125 islands, 249 sq mi (645 sq km), Nagasaki prefecture, in the East China Sea, off W Kyushu, Japan. Fukue is the largest island. Whaling and fi...

Dents du Midi

(Encyclopedia)Dents du Midi däNˈ dü mēdēˈ [key], mountain group in the Alps, Vaud canton, SW Switzerland, near the French border. It rises to 10,695 ft (3,260 m) in Dent du Midi (Haute Cime) peak. ...

Patroon painters

(Encyclopedia)Patroon painters, group of portraitists active in colonial New York from 1715 to 1730. Their work embodied the first clearly American style. The Patroon painters served the Dutch families of New York,...

Brythonic

(Encyclopedia)Brythonic brĭthŏnˈĭk [key], group of languages belonging to the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. See Celtic languages. ...

ketone

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Ketones ketone kēˈtōn [key], any of a class of organic compounds that contain the carbonyl group, C=O, and in which the carbonyl group is bonded only to carbon atoms. The general formula fo...

Dry Tortugas

(Encyclopedia)Dry Tortugas tôrto͞oˈgəz [key], island group in the Gulf of Mexico, off S Fla., 60 mi (97 km) W of Key West. Named by the Spanish explorer Ponce de León in 1513, the islands later became a pirate...

alexandrine

(Encyclopedia)alexandrine ălˌĭgzănˈdrēnˌ, –drīnˌ [key], in prosody, a line of 12 syllables (or 13 if the last syllable is unstressed). Its name probably derives from the fact that some poems of the 12th ...

Sierra Club

(Encyclopedia)Sierra Club, national organization in the United States dedicated to the preservation and expansion of the world's parks, wildlife, and wilderness areas. Founded (1892) in California by a group led by...