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chestnut

(Encyclopedia)chestnut, name for any species of the genus Castanea, deciduous trees of the family Fagaceae (beech or oak family) widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere. They are characterized by thin-shelled...

engraving

(Encyclopedia)engraving, in its broadest sense, the art of cutting lines in metal, wood, or other material either for decoration or for reproduction through printing. In its narrowest sense, it is an intaglio print...

bark, in botany

(Encyclopedia)bark, outer covering of the stem of woody plants, composed of waterproof cork cells protecting a layer of food-conducting tissue—the phloem or inner bark (also called bast). As the woody stem increa...

parrotfish

(Encyclopedia)parrotfish, common name for a member of a large group of colorful reef fishes of warm seas, resembling the wrasses but of a larger size. Long considered a separate family, Scaridae, they are now group...

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

(Encyclopedia)Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), multinational organization (est. 1960, formally constituted 1961) that coordinates petroleum policies and economic aid among oil-producing nations...

body-marking

(Encyclopedia)body-marking, painting, tattooing, or scarification (cutting or burning) of the body for ritual, esthetic, medicinal, magic, or religious purposes. Evidence from prehistoric burials, rock carvings, an...

Caribs

(Encyclopedia)Caribs kărˈĭbz [key], native people formerly inhabiting the Lesser Antilles, West Indies. They are also known as Island Caribs; their Domincan descendants called themselves Kalinago. They seem to h...

Koolhaas, Rem

(Encyclopedia)Koolhaas, Rem (Remmet Lucas Koolhaas), 1944–, Dutch architect, b. Rotterdam. He began his career as a journalist and screenwriter, moving to London in the late 1960s to study architecture. Koolhaas ...

ivory-billed woodpecker

(Encyclopedia)ivory-billed woodpecker, common name for the largest of the North American woodpeckers, Campephilus principalis. Once plentiful in Southern hardwood forests, it was believed to be extinct or nearing e...

Sebald, W. G.

(Encyclopedia)Sebald, W. G. (Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald), 1944–2001, German novelist, grad. Freiburg Univ. (1965). Sebald's novels are dense, elegiac, and meditative. They mingle fiction with history and th...