Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

269 results found

Turner, Joseph Mallord William

(Encyclopedia)Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 1775–1851, English landscape painter, b. London. Turner was the foremost English romantic painter and the most original of English landscape artists; in watercolor he...

squirrel

(Encyclopedia)squirrel, name for small or medium-sized rodents of the family Sciuridae, found throughout the world except in Australia, Madagascar, and the polar regions; it is applied especially to the tree-living...

cat

(Encyclopedia)cat, name applied broadly to the carnivorous mammals constituting the family Felidae, and specifically to the domestic cat, Felis catus. The great roaring cats, the lion, tiger, and leopard are anatom...

Dürer, Albrecht

(Encyclopedia)Dürer, Albrecht älˈbrĕkht dürˈər [key], 1471–1528, German painter, engraver, and theoretician, most influential artist of the German school, b. Nuremberg. Dürer's principal accomplishmen...

Confucianism

(Encyclopedia)Confucianism kənfyo͞oˈshənĭzəm [key], moral and religious system of China. Its origins go back to the Analects (see Chinese literature), the sayings attributed to Confucius, and to ancient comme...

Yeats, W. B.

(Encyclopedia)Yeats, W. B. (William Butler Yeats), 1865–1939, Irish poet and playwright, b. Dublin. The greatest lyric poet Ireland has produced and one of the major figures of 20th-century literature, Yeats was ...

Francis, Saint

(Encyclopedia)Francis, Saint, or Saint Francis of Assisi əsēˈzē [key], 1182?–1226, founder of the Franciscans, one of the greatest Christian saints, b. Assisi, Umbria, Italy. Two years before his death (122...

monkey

(Encyclopedia)monkey, any of a large and varied group of mammals of the primate order. The term monkey includes all primates that do not belong to the categories human, ape, or prosimian; however, monkeys do have c...

rhinoceros

(Encyclopedia)rhinoceros, massive hoofed mammal of Africa, India, and SE Asia, characterized by a snout with one or two horns. The rhinoceros family, along with the horse and tapir families, forms the order of odd-...

light

(Encyclopedia)light, visible electromagnetic radiation. Of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, the human eye is sensitive to only a tiny part, the part that is called light. The wavelengths of visible light range ...