Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Dadie, Bernard Binlin ... Daigak Guksa

Dadie, Bernard Binlin: Ivoirian poet, dramatist, novelist, and administrator whose works have been inspired both by traditional themes from Africa's past and by a need to assert the modern African's desire for equality, dignity, and freedom.
dado: in Classical architecture, the plain portion between the base and cornice of the pedestal of a column and, in later architecture, the paneled, painted, or otherwise decorated lower part of a wall, up to 2 or 3 feet (60 to ...
Dadra and Nagar Haveli: union territory of India, located in the western part of the country between the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, some 15 miles (24 kilometres) from the Arabian Sea and 80 miles north of Bombay. It consists of two sections: Dadra, ...
Dadu: town, Sindh province, southern Pakistan. The town lies just west of the Indus River, about 100 miles (160 km) north-northwest of Hyderabad. A distribution centre, it is connected by road and rail with Hyderabad, Karachi, and Quetta. Dadu has men's ...
Dadu: Hindu-Muslim saint who inspired the formation of a sect called Dadu Panth.
Daedala: ancient festival of Hera, consort of the supreme god Zeus. The Daedala was celebrated on Mount Cithaeron in Greece. In the festival, a wooden image dressed as a bride was carried in procession, then burnt with sacrificed animals and a ...
Daedalic sculpture: type of sculpture attributed to a legendary Greek artist, Daedalus, who is connected in legend both to Bronze Age Crete and to the earliest period of Archaic sculpture in post-Bronze Age Greece. The legends about Daedalus recognize him both as ...
Daedalus: (Greek: "Skillfully Wrought"), mythical Greek architect and sculptor, who was said to have built, among other things, the paradigmatic Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete. Daedalus fell out of favour with Minos and was imprisoned; he fashioned wings of wax ...
Daehlie, Bjorn: Norwegian cross-country skier who holds the Winter Olympic records for the most medals won and the most gold medals. His Olympic success, combined with his record in World Cup competition and world championships, marked him as arguably the greatest Nordic ...
Daendels, Herman Willem: soldier who fought with distinction in the army of the Batavian Republic (the Dutch Republic established by Revolutionary France) and later ably administered Dutch East Indian possessions.
daffodil: bulb-forming flowering plant of the genus Narcissus (q.v.), native to northern Europe and widely cultivated there and in North America. The daffodil grows to about 16 inches (41 cm) in height and has five or six leaves that grow ...
Dafla: tribal people of eastern Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh (formerly North East Frontier Agency), a mountainous state in northeastern India. They speak a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan family.
Dafydd Ap Edmwnd: poet who authoritatively classified and defined the 24 Welsh bardic metres (announced at the Carmarthen eisteddfod, or poets' assembly, in 1451). A master of bardic forms, he wrote elegant and technically perfect love lyrics, eulogies, and elegies. His works are ...
Dafydd Ap Gwilym: poet generally considered one of the greatest figures in Welsh literature. He introduced into a formalistic poetic tradition an authenticity, freshness, and naturalness hitherto unknown.
Dafydd Nanmor: Welsh poet, master of the cywydd form (characterized by rhyming couplets), whose poems express his belief in tradition and aristocracy. Many of his poems reflect his support of the political aspirations of the Tudors; others are simple and sincere love ...
Dagan: West Semitic god of crop fertility, worshiped extensively throughout the ancient Middle East. Dagan was the Hebrew and Ugaritic common noun for "grain," and the god Dagan was the legendary inventor of the plow. His cult is attested as early ...
Dagda: in Celtic religion, one of the leaders of a mythological Irish people, the Tuatha De Danann ("People of the Goddess Danu"). The Dagda was credited with many powers and possessed a caldron that was never empty, fruit trees that were ...
Dagens Nyheter: morning daily newspaper published in Stockholm. It is one of the largest and most influential newspapers in Sweden. It was founded in 1864 by Rudolf Wall. Dagens Nyheter has long been noted for its thorough coverage of ...
Dagerman, Stig: Swedish short-story writer, novelist, and playwright whose works, showing the influence of William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, and Dagerman's older compatriot, Eyvind Johnson, have been held to express a sense of Existentialist anguish.
Dagestan: republic in southern European Russia. Dagestan lies on the eastern end of the northern flank of the Greater Caucasus range, along the western shore of the Caspian Sea. The capital is Makhachkala.
Dagestan rug: usually small floor covering woven in the republic of Dagestan in the eastern Caucasus (Russia). Dagestan rugs are finer than the Kazakh types, but less fine than rugs from the vicinity of Kuba to the south. While many of the ...
Dagestanian languages: group of languages spoken in the northeastern part of the Caucasus and including the Avar-Andi-Dido, the Lak-Dargin (Lak-Dargwa), and the Lezgian groups. One of the distinctive characteristics of a majority of these languages is the contrast of strong and weak ...
dagger: short stabbing knife, ostensibly the diminutive of the sword, though in ancient and medieval times the distinction between a long dagger and a short sword was often obscure. From approximately 1300 the European dagger was consistently differentiated from the sword; ...
Daghur: Mongol people living mainly in the northeastern portion of Inner Mongolia autonomous region and western Heilungkiang province of China and estimated to number about 121,000. Their language, once thought to be Tungusic or a mixture of Mongolian and Tungus, is ...
Dagly, Gerhard: royal Kammerkunstler, or chamber artist, who, as one of the greatest craftsmen in European lacquer, was an important force behind the Baroque style.
Dagobert I: the last Frankish king of the Merovingian dynasty to rule a realm united in more than name only.
Dagobert II: Merovingian Frankish king of Austrasia.
Dagobert III: Merovingian Frankish king who succeeded his father, Childebert III, in 711. For most of his reign the boy was dominated by Pippin II of Herstal, the Austrasian mayor of the palace.
Dagomba: the dominant ethnic group in the chiefdom of Dagbon in the northern region of Ghana; they speak Dagbani (Dagbane), a language of the Gur branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Subject to the Dagomba are a number of tribes and ...
Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mande: French painter and physicist who invented the daguerreotype (q.v.), the first practical process of photography. Though the first permanent photograph from nature was made in 1826/27 by Joseph-Nicephore Niepce of France, it was of poor quality and required about eight ...
daguerreotype: first successful form of photography, named for Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre of France, who invented the technique in collaboration with Joseph-Nicephore Niepce in the 1830s. Daguerre and Niepce found that if a copper plate coated with silver iodide was exposed to light ...
Dagupan: city and port, western Luzon Island, Philippines. It lies on the southern shore of Lingayen Gulf near the mouth of the Dagupan River. It was founded in 1590 by Augustinian missionaries. Dagupan is the port for a region that produces ...
Dahk: city, northern Iraq, capital of Dahuk muhafazah (governorate). The city lies near the northern end of the Tigris River valley. The area in which the city is situated is unsuitable for cultivation but is good for fruit ...
Dahl, Roald: British writer, a popular author of ingenious, irreverent children's books and of adult horror stories.
Dahlbergh, Eric, Count: Swedish soldier, civil servant, and graphic artist who served with distinction in the Swedish war against Denmark (1675-79) and the Great Northern War (1700-21) and directed fortifications as part of the military rebuilding program of King Charles XI.
Dahlgren, John Adolphus Bernard: American inventor of the smooth-bore cannon that was, from its shape, familiarly known as the "soda-water bottle." The shape resulted from a design in which the thickness of metal was varied to match the differences in internal pressure occurring when ...
Dahlia: genus of plants in the family Asteraceae, containing 12 to 20 species of tuberous-rooted herbs that are native to the higher elevations of Mexico and Central America. Most have leaves that are often segmented and toothed or cut.
Dahlmann, Friedrich: prominent liberal historian and advocate of German unification along Kleindeutsch ("Little German," or anti-Austrian) lines, who played a major role in creating the draft constitution of 1848 that attempted unsuccessfully to unite Germany as a constitutional monarchy.
Dahlonega: city, seat (1833) of Lumpkin county, northern Georgia, U.S. Gold was discovered in the locality in 1828, and the site was settled and incorporated in 1833 after one of the nation's first gold rushes; its name derives from the Cherokee ...
Dahmer, Jeffrey: serial murderer whose arrest in 1991 provoked an upsurge of popular interest in serial murder and other crimes.
Dahn, Felix: German jurist, historian, poet, and novelist who made his greatest contribution as a scholar of German antiquity.
Dahna', ad-: (Arabic: "desert"), great arc of reddish sandy desert, central Saudi Arabia, extending about 800 miles (1,300 km) southward from the northeastern edge of an-Nafud (desert) to the northwestern borders of the desert Rub' al-Khali (the Empty Quarter). Thus, ad-Dahna' links ...
Dahomey: kingdom in western Africa that flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries in the region that is now southern Benin. According to tradition, at the beginning of the 17th century three brothers vied for the kingdom of Allada, which, like ...
Dahriyah: in Islam, the unbelievers who contend that the course of time (Arabic: dahr) is all that governs their existence. They were so called because of a reference to them in the Qur'an, in which they are repudiated for saying, "There ...
Dahshur: ancient pyramid site just south of Saqqarah, northern Egypt, on the west bank of the Nile River. Dahshur and other ruins in the area of ancient Memphis-Abu Sir, Saqqarah, Abu Ruwaysh, and the Pyramids of Giza-were collectively designated a UNESCO ...
Dai hyakkajiten: (Japanese: "Great Encyclopaedia"), comprehensive Japanese general encyclopaedia, published in Tokyo.
Dai Jin: Chinese landscape painter of the Ming dynasty.
Dai jiten: (Japanese: "Great Dictionary"), dictionary of the Japanese language published in 13 illustrated volumes in Tokyo (1953-54).
Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank: one of three Japanese banks that merged in 2000 to create the Mizuho Financial Group. Once one of the largest commercial banks in Japan, with branches there and operations in 30 other countries, Dai-Ichi had been established in 1971 through ...
Daiei Motion Picture Company: leading Japanese motion-picture studio that produced some of the major post-World War II film classics, although most of its releases were directed toward urban teenage audiences. The company was formed in 1942, when the Japanese government consolidated the production studios ...
Daigak Guksa: Korean Buddhist priest who founded the Ch'ont'ae sect of Buddhism.