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spikenard

(Encyclopedia)spikenard spīkˈnärd [key], name for several plants. The biblical spikenard, or nard, was a costly aromatic ointment, preserved in alabaster boxes, whose chief ingredient is believed to have been de...

Stirling, town, Scotland

(Encyclopedia)Stirling, town (1991 pop. 38,638), Stirling council area, central Scotland, on the Forth River. The center of a large farm district, it has livestock markets and light industries making agricultural m...

Cabell, Branch

(Encyclopedia)Cabell, Branch (James Branch Cabell) kăˈbəl [key], 1879–1958, American novelist, b. Richmond, Va., grad. William and Mary, 1898. After various experiences as a journalist and a coal miner he bega...

Burnet, Gilbert

(Encyclopedia)Burnet, Gilbert bûrˈnĭt [key], 1643–1715, Scottish bishop and writer. He studied in Scotland, England, and abroad, held minor ecclesiastical office in Scotland, and was appointed (1669) professor...

Victoria, Tomás Luis de

(Encyclopedia)Victoria, Tomás Luis de tōmäsˈ lo͞oēsˈ dā vēktōˈryä [key], c.1548–1611, Spanish composer. He went to Rome in 1565 to study for the priesthood at the German Jesuit College. In 1571 he bec...

Chomsky, Noam

(Encyclopedia)Chomsky, Noam nōm chŏmˈskē [key], 1928–, educator and linguist, b. Philadelphia. Chomsky, who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955, developed a theory of transforma...

Eliot, George

(Encyclopedia)Eliot, George, pseud. of Mary Ann or Marian Evans, 1819–80, English novelist, b. Arbury, Warwickshire. One of the great English novelists, she was reared in a strict atmosphere of evangelical Protes...

Beard, Charles Austin

(Encyclopedia)Beard, Charles Austin, 1874–1948, American historian, b. near Knightstown, Ind. A year at Oxford as a graduate student gave him an interest in English local government, and after further study at Co...

Guise

(Encyclopedia)Guise gēz, gwēz [key], influential ducal family of France. Henri's brother Louis de Lorraine, Cardinal de Guise, 1555–88, was killed at the same time as Henri. After their deaths the leadersh...

Laban, Rudolf von

(Encyclopedia)Laban, Rudolf von fôn läbˈän [key], 1879–1958, Slovakian dancer, choreographer, and dance theorist. After studying in Paris and performing in N Africa, Germany, and Austria, he founded (1910) a ...