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Steiner, George

(Encyclopedia)Steiner, George, 1929–2020, American critic, essayist, novelist, and educator, b. Paris, France, immigrated to the United States 1940, became a U.S. citizen 1944; Ph.D. Oxford, 195). He spoke and wr...

preposition

(Encyclopedia)preposition, in English, the part of speech embracing a small number of words used before nouns and pronouns to connect them to the preceding material, e.g., of, in, and about. Prepositions are a clas...

Bell, Alexander Melville

(Encyclopedia)Bell, Alexander Melville, 1819–1905, Scottish-American educator, b. Edinburgh. Bell worked out a physiological or visible alphabet, with symbols that were intended to represent every sound of the hu...

symmetry

(Encyclopedia)symmetry, generally speaking, a balance or correspondence between various parts of an object; the term symmetry is used both in the arts and in the sciences. In art and design, it is often used in a s...

Four Freedoms

(Encyclopedia)Four Freedoms. In his message to Congress proposing lend-lease legislation (Jan. 6, 1941), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated that Four Freedoms should prevail everywhere in the world—freedo...

British Columbia, University of

(Encyclopedia)British Columbia, University of, at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; provincially supported; coeducational; chartered 1908, opened 1915. It has faculties of arts, science, graduate studies, applie...

interjection

(Encyclopedia)interjection, English part of speech consisting of exclamatory words such as oh, alas, and ouch. They are marked by a feature of intonation that is usually shown in writing by an exclamation point (se...

Smith, Seba

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Seba, 1792–1868, American humorist, b. Buckfield, Maine. He founded the Portland Courier in 1829 and in it began (1830) a series of humorous letters on politics under the pen name Major Jack ...

jargon

(Encyclopedia)jargon, pejorative term applied to speech or writing that is considered meaningless, unintelligible, or ugly. In one sense the term is applied to the special language of a profession, which may be unn...

Setesdal

(Encyclopedia)Setesdal sāˈtəsdäl [key], narrow valley, S Norway, in Aust-Agder co. It is drained by the Otra River (150 mi/241 km long) and contains several lakes. Communication with the rest of the country has...