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Verona, city, Italy

(Encyclopedia)Verona vərôˈnä [key], city (1991 pop. 255,824), capital of Verona prov., Venetia, NE Italy, on the Adige River. It is a transportation junction and a major industrial and agricultural center, with...

Updike, John

(Encyclopedia)Updike, John, 1932–2009, American author, one of the nation's most distinguished 20th-century men of letters, b. Shillington, Pa., grad. Harvard, 1954. In his many novels and stories, written in a w...

soap

(Encyclopedia)soap, a cleansing agent. It cleanses by lowering the surface tension of water, by emulsifying grease, and by absorbing dirt into the foam. Ancient peoples are believed to have employed wood ashes and ...

Serbo-Croatian

(Encyclopedia)Serbo-Croatian sûrˈbō-krōāˈshən [key], language belonging to the South Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Slavic languages). Serbo-Croatian compr...

Psalms

(Encyclopedia)Psalms sôlˈtər [key], book of the Bible, a collection of 150 hymnic pieces. Since the last centuries b.c., this book has been the chief hymnal of Jews, and subsequently, of Christians. The hymns ar...

Commonwealth of Nations

(Encyclopedia)Commonwealth of Nations, voluntary association of Great Britain and its dependencies, certain former British dependencies that are now sovereign states and their dependencies, and the associated state...

engineering

(Encyclopedia)engineering, profession devoted to designing, constructing, and operating the structures, machines, and other devices of industry and everyday life. Until the Industrial Revolution there were only t...

Farm Credit Administration

(Encyclopedia)Farm Credit Administration (FCA), an independent agency of the executive branch of the federal government that supervises and regulates the Farm Credit System (FCS) for American agriculture. The Farm ...

Hittites

(Encyclopedia)Hittites hĭtˈīts [key], ancient people of Asia Minor and Syria, who flourished from 1600 to 1200 b.c. The Hittites, a people of Indo-European connection, were supposed to have entered Cappadocia c....