Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

flannel

(Encyclopedia)flannel, large group of napped plain-weave or twill-weave fabrics made of cotton, wool, or synthetic fibers. Flannel fabrics vary in closeness or firmness of weave and in degree of napping. A French f...

Augur, Hezekiah

(Encyclopedia)Augur, Hezekiah ôˈgər [key], 1791–1858, American sculptor. After a business failure he devoted himself to art and was encouraged by Samuel F. B. Morse. His bust of Washington and the statuette gr...

Woodson, Carter Godwin

(Encyclopedia)Woodson, Carter Godwin, 1875–1950, African-American educator, b. New Canton, Va., Ph.D. Harvard (1912). He taught at Howard Univ. and helped organize (1915) the Association for the Study of Negro Li...

smaltite

(Encyclopedia)smaltite smôlˈtīt [key], opaque tin-white to steel-gray mineral of the pyrite group, a compound of cobalt and arsenic. It occurs in massive form, occasionally in crystals (cubes) of the isometric s...

Srirangam

(Encyclopedia)Srirangam srērŭngˈgəm [key], town (1991 pop. 70,109), Tamil Nadu state, SE India, on an island in the Kaveri River. It is noted for a group of temples to Vishnu (built c.1600), which attract many ...

Baluchi

(Encyclopedia)Baluchi bəlo͞oˈchē [key], language belonging to the Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. See Indo-Iranian languages. ...

Dorsey, Jimmy

(Encyclopedia)Dorsey, Jimmy (James Francis Dorsey), 1904–57, and his brother Tommy Dorsey (Thomas Francis Dorsey, Jr.), 1905–1956, both b. Shenandoah, Pa., American jazz musicians and bandleaders during the Big...

Corea, Chick

(Encyclopedia) Corea, Chick (Armando Anthony), 1941-2021, American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader, b. Chelsea, Ma. Corea’s father was a bandleader in Boston...

decadents

(Encyclopedia)decadents, in literature, name loosely applied to those 19th-century, fin-de-siècle European authors who sought inspiration, both in their lives and in their writings, in aestheticism and in all the ...

Fanti

(Encyclopedia)Fanti fănˈtē, fänˈ– [key], black African ethnic group, S Ghana, living around Cape Coast and Elmina, one of the Akan peoples. The Fanti speak a Twi language, which is part of the Kwa group of t...