Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

peddler

(Encyclopedia)peddler or hawker, itinerant vendor of small goods. In rural America peddlers carried their packs or drove a horse and cart from door to door. While the importance of peddlers to the small American co...

trumpet

(Encyclopedia)trumpet, brass wind musical instrument of part cylindrical, part conical bore, in the shape of a flattened loop and having three piston valves to regulate the pitch. Its origin is ancient; records of ...

Monocacy

(Encyclopedia)Monocacy mənŏkˈəsē [key], river, c.60 mi (100 km) long, rising in S Pa., and flowing S across Md. to join the Potomac River near Frederick, Md. On its banks, just E of Frederick, the Civil War ba...

Ramusio, Giambattista

(Encyclopedia)Ramusio, Giambattista jämˌbät–tēˈstä rämo͝oˈzyō [key], 1485–1557, Italian editor and compiler, b. Treviso. He served in diplomatic posts for the Venetian state and eventually in the Coun...

Decorated style

(Encyclopedia)Decorated style, name applied to the second period of English Gothic architecture from the late 13th to the mid-14th cent. The basic structural elements developed during the Early English style (late ...

James, Thomas, American fur trader and pioneer

(Encyclopedia)James, Thomas, 1782–1847, American fur trader and pioneer, b. Maryland. He accompanied the 1809 expedition of the Missouri Fur Company up the Missouri River. He left the expedition at the Mandan vil...

Baer, Karl Ernst von

(Encyclopedia)Baer, Karl Ernst von, 1792–1876, Estonian biologist. He was a professor at Würzburg and Königsberg and from 1834 at St. Petersburg. Considered a founder of modern embryology, he discovered the not...

Eleusinian Mysteries

(Encyclopedia)Eleusinian Mysteries ĕlyo͞osĭnˈēən [key], principal religious mysteries of ancient Greece. The mysteries may have originated as part of an early agrarian festival peculiar to certain families in...

Nusaybin

(Encyclopedia)Nusaybin nēˈsĭbēn [key], town (1990 pop. 50,605), SE Turkey, near the Syrian border. It is a commercial and transportation center. It has ruins of the ancient Nisibis, the residence of early (2d c...

manueline

(Encyclopedia)manueline mənwĕlˈēn, –īn [key], sumptuous, composite Portuguese style of architectural ornamentation of the early 16th cent. It combined contemporary Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Flemish e...