Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

grand jury

(Encyclopedia)grand jury, in law, body of persons selected to inquire into crimes committed within a certain jurisdiction. It usually comprises a greater number than the trial, or petit (also, petty) jury, having s...

fraud

(Encyclopedia)fraud, in law, willful misrepresentation intended to deprive another of some right. The offense, generally only a tort, may also constitute the crime of false pretenses. Frauds are either actual or co...

Harlan, John Marshall, 1833–1911, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

(Encyclopedia)Harlan, John Marshall, 1833–1911, American jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1877–1911), b. Boyle co., Ky., grad. Centre College, 1850. Admitted to the bar in 1853, he served in...

harmonica

(Encyclopedia)harmonica. 1 The simplest of the musical instruments employing free reeds, known also as the mouth organ or French harp. It was probably invented in 1829 by Friedrich Buschmann of Berlin, who called h...

Bhagavad-Gita

(Encyclopedia)Bhagavad-Gita bŭgˈəvəd-gēˈtə [key] [Skt.,=song of the Lord], Sanskrit poem incorporated into the Mahabharata, one of the greatest religious classics of Hinduism. The Gita (as it is often called...

British Indian Ocean Territory

(Encyclopedia)British Indian Ocean Territory, archipelago, c.1,180 mi (1,900 km), NE of Mauritius, in the central Indian Ocean. The more than 50 islands, which form the Chagos Archipelago and are located on the sou...

uracil

(Encyclopedia)uracil yo͝orˈəsĭl [key], organic base of the pyrimidine family. It was isolated from herring sperm and also produced in a laboratory in 1900–1901. When combined with the sugar ribose in a glycos...

name

(Encyclopedia)name. Personal identifying names are found in every known culture, and they often pass from one language to another. Hence the occurrence of Native American place names throughout the United States an...

International Criminal Court

(Encyclopedia)International Criminal Court (ICC), first permanent world court created specifically to try individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes of aggression, and crimes against humanity, est. 2002; located ...

series

(Encyclopedia)series, in mathematics, indicated sum of a sequence of terms. A series may be finite or infinite. A finite series contains a definite number of terms whose sum can be found by various methods. An infi...