Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

291 results found

accounting

(Encyclopedia)accounting, classification, analysis, and interpretation of the financial, or bookkeeping, records of an enterprise. The professional who supplies such services is known as an accountant. Auditing is ...

bear, in zoology

(Encyclopedia)bear, large mammal of the family Ursidae in the order Carnivora, found almost exclusively in the Northern Hemisphere. Bears have large heads, bulky bodies, massive hindquarters, short, powerful limbs,...

soil

(Encyclopedia)soil, surface layer of the earth, composed of fine rock material disintegrated by geological processes; and humus, the organic remains of decomposed vegetation. In agriculture, soil is the medium that...

race

(Encyclopedia)race, one of the group of populations regarded as constituting humanity. The differences that have historically determined the classification into races are predominantly physical aspects of appearanc...

bivalve

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Internal anatomy of a clam, Anodonta, representative mollusk of the class Pelecypoda (the bivalves) bivalve, aquatic mollusk of the class Pelecypoda (“hatchet-foot”) or Bivalvia, with a la...

Sino-Tibetan languages

(Encyclopedia)Sino-Tibetan languages, family of languages spoken by over a billion people in central and SE Asia. This linguistic family is second only to the Indo-European stock in the number of its speakers. It i...

river

(Encyclopedia)river, stream of water larger than a brook or creek. Land surfaces are never perfectly flat, and as a result the runoff after precipitation tends to flow downward by the shortest and steepest course i...

X ray

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Typical X-ray composite spectrum (intensity as a function of frequency) X ray, invisible, highly penetrating electromagnetic radiation of much shorter wavelength (higher frequency) than visibl...

international language

(Encyclopedia)international language, sometimes called universal language, a language intended to be used by people of different linguistic backgrounds to facilitate communication among them and to reduce the misun...

iconography

(Encyclopedia)iconography īˌkŏnŏgˈrəfē [key] [Gr.,=image-drawing] or iconology [Gr.,=image-study], in art history, the study and interpretation of figural representations, either individual or symbolic, reli...