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cuttlefish

(Encyclopedia)cuttlefish, common name applied to cephalopod mollusks that have 10 tentacles, or arms, 8 of which have muscular suction cups on their inner surface and 2 that are longer and can shoot out for graspin...

rush

(Encyclopedia)rush, name for tall, grasslike plants of various families, many of which have hollow stems. The true rushes belong to the family Juncaceae, one of the oldest families of plants, closely related to the...

Bainbridge, William

(Encyclopedia)Bainbridge, William, 1774–1833, American naval officer, b. Princeton, N.J. An experienced sea captain, he joined (1798) the navy when war with France threatened. His ship, the Retaliation, was captu...

Goffman, Erving

(Encyclopedia)Goffman, Erving, 1922–82, American sociologist, b. Manville, Alta. His field research in the Shetland Islands resulted in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956), which analyzes interperson...

Ayeyarwady

(Encyclopedia)Ayeyarwady ĭrəwŏdˈē [key], chief river of Myanmar, c.1,000 mi (1,600 km) long, formed by the confluence of the Mali and Nmai rivers in N Myanmar. The combined stream flows south through gorges st...

Magdalena

(Encyclopedia)Magdalena mägᵺälāˈnä [key], river, c.1,000 mi (1,600 km) long, rising in the Cordillera Central, SW Colombia and flowing N to the Caribbean Sea near Barranquilla. It flows in a fault-block vall...

Wiener, Norbert

(Encyclopedia)Wiener, Norbert, 1894–1964, American mathematician, educator, and founder of the field of cybernetics, b. Columbia, Mo., grad. Tufts College, 1909, Ph.D. Harvard, 1913. In 1920 he joined the faculty...

blockade

(Encyclopedia)blockade, use of naval forces to cut off maritime communication and supply. Blockades may be used to prevent shipping from reaching enemy ports, or they may serve purposes of coercion. The term is rar...

Tesla, Nikola

(Encyclopedia)Tesla, Nikola tĕsˈlə [key], 1856–1943, American electrician and inventor, b. Croatia (then an Austrian province). An ethnic Serb, he immigrated to the United States in 1884, worked for a short pe...

dragon

(Encyclopedia)dragon, mythical beast usually represented as a huge, winged, fire-breathing reptile. For centuries the dragon has been prominent in the folklore of many peoples; thus, its physical characteristics va...