Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

locoweed

(Encyclopedia)locoweed or crazyweed [Span. loco=crazy], any of several American species of the genera Astragalus and Oxytropus, north-temperate leguminous plants of the family Leguminosae (pulse family), that, when...

classical swine fever

(Encyclopedia)classical swine fever or hog cholera, acute, highly infectious viral disease of swine, historically perhaps the most serious disease of swine in North America. It is characterized by dullness and list...

Zoshchenko, Mikhail Mikhailovich

(Encyclopedia)Zoshchenko, Mikhail Mikhailovich mēkhəyēl mēkhīˈləvĭch zôˈshchənkô [key], 1895–1958, Soviet humorist. Zoshchenko was born in Poltava, but spent most of his life in St. Petersburg where h...

Jones, Ernest

(Encyclopedia)Jones, Ernest, 1879–1958, British psychoanalyst, b. Wales. He taught (1910–13) at the Univ. of Toronto and was director (1908–13) of the Ontario Clinic for Nervous Diseases. He founded the Inter...

alcoholism

(Encyclopedia)alcoholism, 04/00 disease characterized by impaired control over the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholism is a serious problem worldwide; in the United States the wide availability of alcoho...

Thoroughbred horse

(Encyclopedia)Thoroughbred horse, breed of light horse more properly known as the English running horse. As its name implies, it was the first pedigreed, or “thoroughbred” horse. It originated in England from c...

Mollusca

(Encyclopedia)Mollusca məlŭsˈkə [key], taxonomic name for the one of the largest phyla of invertebrate animals (Arthropoda is the largest) comprising more than 50,000 living mollusk species and about 35,000 fos...

Chu Ta

(Encyclopedia)Chu Ta or Zhu Da both: jo͞o dä [key], c.1626–c.1705, Chinese painter and calligrapher, also known as Pa-ta-shan-jen or Bada Shanren. Said to have been a descendant of the imperial Ming family, he ...

numeration

(Encyclopedia)numeration, in mathematics, process of designating numbers according to any particular system; the number designations are in turn called numerals. In any place value system of numeration, a base numb...

morphine

(Encyclopedia)morphine, principal derivative of opium, which is the juice in the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. It was first isolated from opium in 1803 by the German pharmacist F. W. A. S...