Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

193 results found

guilds

(Encyclopedia)guilds or gilds, economic and social associations of persons engaging in the same business or craft, typical of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Membership was by profession or craft, and the primar...

soccer

(Encyclopedia)CE5 soccer, outdoor ball and goal game, also called association football or simply football. The first recorded game probably was that on a Shrove Tuesday in Derby, England, part of a festival to c...

Yukon, territory, Canada

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Yukon, territory (2001 pop. 28,674), 207,076 sq mi (536,327 sq km), NW Canada. The territory's history began with the explorations in the 1840s of Robert Campbell and John Bell, fur traders f...

euthanasia

(Encyclopedia)euthanasia yo͞oˌthənāˈzhə [key], either painlessly putting to death or failing to prevent death from natural causes in cases of terminal illness or irreversible coma. The term comes from the Gre...

Whitman, Walt

(Encyclopedia)Whitman, Walt (Walter Whitman), 1819–92, American poet, b. West Hills, N.Y. Considered by many to be the greatest of all American poets, Walt Whitman celebrated the freedom and dignity of the indivi...

machine

(Encyclopedia)machine, arrangement of moving and stationary mechanical parts used to perform some useful work or to provide transportation. From a historical perspective, many of the first machines were the result ...

Byron, George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron

(Encyclopedia)Byron, George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron bīˈrən [key], 1788–1824, English poet and satirist. Ranked with Shelley and Keats as one of the great Romantic poets, Byron became famous throughout E...

Henry VI, king of England

(Encyclopedia)Henry VI, 1421–71, king of England (1422–61, 1470–71). Henry was a mild, honest, and pious man, a patron of literature and the arts and the founder of Eton College (1440). He was, however, u...

golf

(Encyclopedia)golf, game of hitting a small hard ball with specially made clubs over an outdoor course sometimes (particularly if it is near the coast) called a links. The object is to deposit the ball in a specifi...

Browse by Subject