Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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academy ... Accursius, Franciscus

academy: a society of learned individuals organized to advance art, science, literature, music, or some other cultural or intellectual area of endeavour. From its original reference in Greek to the philosophical school of Plato, the word has come to refer much ...
Academy: in ancient Greece, the academy, or college, of philosophy in the northwestern outskirts of Athens, where Plato acquired property about 387 BC and used to teach. At the site there had been an olive grove, park, and gymnasium sacred to ...
Academy Award: any of several awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., to recognize achievement in the film industry. The award, a gold-plated statuette, is bestowed upon winners in the following ...
Academy Bay: bay at the south end of Santa Cruz (Indefatigable) Island (one of the Galapagos Islands), about 600 miles (965 km) west of Ecuador, in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Named in 1905 by the California Academy of Sciences Expedition, it is ...
Academy of Venice, Galleries of the: museum of art in Venice housing an unrivaled collection of paintings from the Venetian masters of the 13th through the 18th century. There are outstanding works by Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and Canaletto.
Academy, Gallery of the: museum of art in Florence chiefly famous for its several sculptures by Michelangelo, notably his "David." It also has a collection of 15th- and 16th-century paintings and many 13th-16th-century Tuscan paintings. It was founded in 1784 by the grand duke ...
Acadia: North American Atlantic seaboard possessions of France in the 17th and 18th centuries. Centred in what is now Nova Scotia, Acadia was probably intended to include the other present Maritime Provinces of Canada as well as parts of Maine [U.S.] ...
Acadia National Park: national park on the Atlantic coast of Maine, U.S., astride Frenchman Bay. It has an area of 65 square miles (168 square km) and was originally established as Sieur de Monts National Monument (1916), named for Pierre du Guast, sieur ...
Acadian orogeny: a mountain-building event that affected the northern portion of the Appalachian Geosyncline from present-day New York to Newfoundland during the Devonian Period (408 to 360 million years ago). Orogenic activity began during the Early Devonian in Gaspe, spread westward throughout ...
Acajutla: Pacific seaport, southwestern El Salvador. Spanish conquistadores defeated the Indians there in 1524, and it subsequently flourished as a colonial port. The old town has been rebuilt inland in order to make room for new port facilities. Acajutla is El ...
Acambaro: city, southeastern Guanajuato estado ("state"), central Mexico. Acambaro lies along the Lerma River, in the central plateau, at 6,388 feet (1,947 m) above sea level. A Spanish settlement was founded there in 1526 on the site of a small Tarascan ...
Acanthaceae: one of 18 families in the figwort order of flowering plants (Scrophulariales), containing approximately 250 genera and at least 2,500 species distributed predominantly in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. The greater part of the Acanthaceae family are herbs ...
acanthus: in architecture and decorative arts, a stylized ornamental motif based on a characteristic Mediterranean plant with jagged leaves, Acanthus spinosus (for illustration, see order). It was first used by the Greeks in the 5th century BC on temple roof ornaments, ...
Acapulco: resort and port, Guerrero estado ("state"), southwestern Mexico. Situated on a deep, semicircular bay, Acapulco has the best harbour on the Pacific coast of Mexico and one of the finest natural anchorages in the world. The town lies on a ...
Acarai Mountains: low range on the border of Brazil (Para state) and southern Guyana. The mountains, which rise to about 2,000 feet (600 m) above sea level, run in an east-west direction for about 80 miles (130 km) and form part of ...
acari: subclass of the arthropod class Arachnida that includes the mites and ticks. The acarids may be separated into three orders, Opilioacariformes, Parasitiformes, and Acariformes, consisting of six suborders and about 428 families.
Acarigua: city, northern Portuguesa estado ("state"), northwestern Venezuela. Formerly the state capital, Acarigua is a principal commercial centre of the northern portion of the Llanos (plains), in which cattle, sugarcane, cotton, corn (maize), and rice are the principal products. Industries in ...
Acarina: subclass of the arthropod class Arachnida that includes the mite and tick (qq.v.).
Acarnania: district of ancient Greece bounded by the Ionian Sea, the Ambracian Gulf, Mount Thyamus, and the Achelous River. Corinth founded several colonies on the coast of Acarnania in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Originally a tribal unit, Acarnania developed ...
acatalasia: rare hereditary metabolic disorder caused by lack of the organic catalyst or enzyme called catalase. Although a deficiency of catalase activity is noted in many tissues of the body, including the red blood cells, bone marrow, liver, and skin, only ...
acceleration: time rate at which a velocity is changing. Because velocity has both magnitude and direction, it is called a vector quantity; acceleration is also a vector quantity and must account for changes in both the magnitude and direction of a ...
acceleration stress: physiological changes that occur in the human body in motion as a result of rapid increase of speed. Rapid acceleration and surges in acceleration are felt more critically than are gradual shifts. Pilots are especially subject to the effects of ...
accelerator: in the rubber industry, any of numerous chemical substances that cause vulcanization (q.v.) of rubber to occur more rapidly or at lower temperatures. Many classes of compounds act as accelerators, the most important being organic materials containing sulfur and nitrogen, ...
accelerometer: instrument that measures the rate at which the velocity of an object is changing (i.e., its acceleration). Acceleration cannot be measured directly. An accelerometer, therefore, measures the force exerted by restraints that are placed on a reference mass to hold ...
accent: in music, momentary emphasis on a particular rhythmic or melodic detail; accent may be implied or specifically indicated, either graphically for example, >, -) or verbally (sforzato, abbreviated sfz). In metrically organized music, accents serve to articulate rhythmic groupings, especially ...
accent: in prosody, a rhythmically significant stress on the syllables of a verse, usually at regular intervals. The word accent is often used interchangeably with stress, though some prosodists use accent to mean the emphasis that is determined ...
accent: in phonetics, that property of a syllable which makes it stand out in an utterance relative to its neighbouring syllables. The emphasis on the accented syllable relative to the unaccented syllables may be realized through greater length, higher or lower ...
accentor: any of the 12 species of the bird genus Prunella, constituting the Old World family Prunellidae (order Passeriformes). They have thrushlike bills and rounded wings, and they frequently hop or move with a peculiar motion that has given them another ...
accentual verse: in prosody, a metrical system based only on the number of stresses or accented syllables in a line of verse. In accentual verse the total number of syllables in a line can vary as long as there are the prescribed ...
accentual-syllabic verse: in prosody, the metrical system that is most commonly used in English poetry. It is based on both the number of stresses, or accents, and the number of syllables in each line of verse. A line of iambic pentameter verse, ...
acceptance: short-term credit instrument consisting of a written order requiring a buyer to pay a specified sum at a given date to the seller, signed by the buyer as an indication of his intention to honour his obligation. Acceptances are used ...
Accesi, Compagnia degli: company that performed commedia dell'arte (improvised popular Italian comedy) in the early 1600s. The name means "the stimulated." Leadership was provided by Tristano Martinelli (famous for his portrayal of Arlecchino, the mischievous servant) and Pier Maria Cecchini (known as the ...
accessory: in law, a person who becomes equally guilty in the crime of another by knowingly and voluntarily aiding the criminal prior to or after the crime. An accessory is one kind of accomplice (q.v.), the other being an abettor, who ...
accessory mineral: any mineral in an igneous rock not essential to the naming of the rock. When it is present in small amounts, as is common, it is called a minor accessory. If the amount is greater or is of special significance, ...
acciaccatura: in music, ornamental note sometimes confused with appoggiatura (q.v.).
Acciaiuoli, Niccolo: statesman, soldier, and grand seneschal of Naples who enjoyed a predominant position in the Neapolitan court.
accidental: in music, sign placed immediately to the left of a note to show that the note must be changed in pitch. A sharp (♯) raises a note by a semitone; a flat (♭) lowers it by a semitone; a natural ...
accipiter: any bird of the genus Accipiter, largest genus of the birds of prey, consisting of about 50 species of falconiform birds, or "bird" hawks, of the family Accipitridae. Sometimes accipiters are referred to as the "true" hawks. They have broad, ...
accismus: a form of irony in which a person feigns indifference to or pretends to refuse something he or she desires. The fox's dismissal of the grapes in Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes is an example of accismus. ...
Accius, Lucius: one of the greatest of the Roman tragic poets, in the view of his contemporaries. His plays (more than 40 titles are known, and about 700 lines survive) were mostly free translations from Greek tragedy, many from Euripides, with violent ...
acclimatization: any of the numerous gradual, long-term responses of an organism to changes in its environment. Such responses are more or less habitual and reversible should environmental conditions revert to an earlier state.
accompaniment: in music, auxiliary part or parts of a composition designed to support the principal part or to throw it into relief. In secular medieval music and in much folk and non-European music, instrumental accompaniments for singers consist of unison or ...
accomplice: in law, a person who becomes equally guilty in the crime of another by knowingly and voluntarily aiding the other to commit the offense. An accomplice is either an accessory or an abettor. The accessory aids a criminal prior to ...
Accoramboni, Vittoria: Italian woman whose life story aroused a great deal of contemporary interest and was later the basis for a play by John Webster, The White Devil (1612), and for a novel by Ludwig Tieck, Vittoria Accorombona (1840).
accordion: free-reed portable musical instrument, consisting of a treble casing with external piano-style keys or buttons and a bass casing (usually with buttons) attached to opposite sides of a hand-operated bellows.
account payable: any amount owed by a company as the result of a purchase of goods or services from another company on a credit basis. Under a trade-credit arrangement, the purchasing company, after placing its order with the seller, receives the goods ...
account receivable: any amount owed to a business by a customer as a result of a purchase of goods or services from it on a credit basis. The company making the sale does not receive an acceptance or promissory note (i.e., written ...
accounting: systematic development and analysis of information about the economic affairs of an organization. This information may be used in a number of ways: by a firm's managers to help them plan and control ongoing operations; by owners and legislative or ...
Accra: capital and largest city of Ghana, on the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean). The city lies partly on a cliff, 25 to 40 feet (8 to 12 metres) high, and spreads northward over the undulating Accra plains. The area's susceptibility ...
acculturation: the processes of change in artifacts, customs, and beliefs that result from the contact of societies with different cultural traditions. The term is also used to refer to the results of such changes.
Accursius, Franciscus: Italian legal scholar and leading jurist of the 13th century who was responsible for the renovation of Roman law. He was the last of a series of legal glossators (annotators) of Justinian's compilation of Roman law.