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Kircher, Athanasius

(Encyclopedia)Kircher, Athanasius ätänäˈzēo͝os kĭrkhˈər [key], 1601?–1680, German Jesuit archaeologist, mathematician, biologist, philologist, astronomer, musicologist, and physicist. One of the world's ...

verb

(Encyclopedia)verb, part of speech typically used to indicate an action. English verbs are inflected for person, number, tense and partially for mood; compound verbs formed with auxiliaries (e.g., be, can, have, do...

Aramaic

(Encyclopedia)Aramaic ârəmāˈĭk [key], language belonging to the West Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages). At some point during the se...

Swedish language

(Encyclopedia)Swedish language, member of the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. It is the official language of Sweden and one of the official...

African literature

(Encyclopedia)African literature, literary works of the African continent. African literature consists of a body of work in different languages and various genres, ranging from oral literature to literature written...

Grotefend, Georg Friedrich

(Encyclopedia)Grotefend, Georg Friedrich gāˈôrkh frēˈdrĭkh grōˈtəfĕnt [key], 1775–1853, German archaeologist and philologist. He specialized in Latin and Italian and wrote works on the Umbrian and Oscan...

Nilotes

(Encyclopedia)Nilotes nīlōˈtēz [key], people of E Africa who speak Nilotic languages. Among these are the Nuer and the Masai. The most prominent Nilotic ethnic groups live in South Sudan, N Uganda, and N Kenya....

nominative

(Encyclopedia)nominative nŏmˈĭnətĭv [key], [Lat.,=naming], in Latin grammar, the case usually employed for the noun that is the subject of the sentence. The term is used in the grammar of languages with Latinl...

Babel

(Encyclopedia)Babel bāˈbəl [key] [Heb.,=confused], in the Bible, place where Noah's descendants (who spoke one language) tried to build a tower reaching up to heaven to make a name for themselves. For this presu...

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall

(Encyclopedia)Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 1806–63, English statesman and man of letters. Entering Parliament as a Liberal in 1847, he served as chancellor of exchequer (1855–58), home secretary (1859–61), an...