Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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descent ... Dessau

descent: the system of acknowledged social parentage, which varies from society to society, whereby a person may claim kinship ties with another. If no limitation were placed on the recognition of kinship, everybody would be kin to everyone else; but in ...
Deschamps, Emile: poet prominent in the development of Romanticism.
Deschamps, Eustache: poet and author of L'Art de dictier (1392), the first treatise on French versification.
Deschanel, Paul: French political figure who was an important parliamentary leader during the Third Republic and served as its 10th president (Feb. 17 to Sept. 20, 1920).
descloizite: vanadate mineral containing lead, copper, and zinc that usually forms brownish red to blackish brown crusts of intergrown crystals or rounded fibrous masses; its physical appearance is varied, however, and specimens have been found in shades from orange-red to black ...
descort: a synonym for lai, a medieval Provencal lyric in which the stanzas are nonuniform. The term also refers to a poem in medieval Provencal literature with stanzas in different languages. Derived from Old French and Old Provencal, the word literally ...
Dese: town, central Ethiopia, situated on the western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley at an elevation of 7,500 feet (2,300 m). Dese (Amharic: "My Joy") is a commercial and communications centre, 16 miles (25 km) northwest of Kembolcha, which is ...
Deseado River: river in southern Argentina, rising in Buenos Aires Lake in the Andes of southern Chile and Argentina. It flows generally eastward and southeastward through Santa Cruz province. Near Koluel Kayke and Jaramillo it sometimes disappears into the dry soils of ...
desensitization: treatment that attempts to eliminate allergic reactions, as of hay fever or bronchial asthma, by a series of injections in graded strengths of the substance to which the person is sensitive (e.g., pollen, house dust). Extracts of the material to ...
Deseret News, The: daily newspaper published in Salt Lake City, Utah, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). It was founded as a biweekly in 1850. The word Deseret means "Land of the Honey Bee," according to the Book of ...
desert: any large, extremely dry area of land with sparse vegetation. It is one of the Earth's major types of ecosystems, supporting a community of distinctive plants and animals specially adapted to the harsh environment.
Desert cultures: in North America, ancient cultures centred on the Great Basin in the area of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona; they lasted from about 7000 or 8000 BC to about 2000 BC. Subsistence was based on gathering wild seeds and plants and ...
desert dormouse: a rarely seen or captured small rodent of Central Asia. Weighing less than 28 grams (1 ounce), the desert dormouse has a stout rounded body 8 to 10 cm (3.1 to 3.9 inches) long and a slightly shorter fine-haired tail ...
Desert Fathers: early Christian hermits whose practice of asceticism in the Egyptian desert, beginning in the 3rd century, formed the basis of Christian monasticism. One of these hermits, Pachomius of the Thebaid (c. AD 290-346; see Pachomius, Saint), who organized nine monasteries ...
desert palace: any country dwelling built in Syria, Jordan, and Palestine by Umayyad (AD 661-750) rulers and aristocrats.
desert pavement: surface of angular, interlocking fragments of pebbles, gravel, or boulders in arid areas. Desert pavement forms on level or gently sloping desert flats, fans, or bajadas and lake and river terraces of Pleistocene age (10,000 to 1,600,000 years old).
Desert Rats: a group of British soldiers who helped defeat the Germans in North Africa during World War II. The Desert Rats, led by General Allen Francis Harding, were especially noted for a hard-fought, three-month campaign against the more experienced German Afrika ...
desert varnish: thin, dark red to black mineral coating (generally iron and manganese oxides and silica) deposited on pebbles and rocks on the surface of desert regions. As dew and soil moisture brought to the surface by capillarity evaporate, their dissolved minerals ...
desertification: spread or encroachment of a desert environment into arid or semiarid regions, caused by climatic changes, human influence, or both. Climatic factors include periods of temporary but severe drought and long-term climatic changes toward aridity. Human factors include the artificial ...
Desgarcins, Magdeleine-Marie: original name Louise Desgarcins one of the greatest of French tragediennes.
Deshoulieres, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde: French poet who, from 1672 until her death, presided over a salon that was a meeting place for the prominent literary figures of her day. She was also a leader of the coterie that attacked Jean Racine's Phedre.
Desiderio Da Settignano: Florentine sculptor whose works, particularly his marble low reliefs, were unrivaled in the 15th century for subtlety and technical accomplishment.
design: see industrial design; interior design. See also advertising; architecture; typography; and other subject areas in which design is fundamental.
designer drugs: in popular usage, illegal synthetic, laboratory-made chemicals. Although the term is not precisely defined, it is understood to refer to commonly abused drugs such as fentanyl, ketamine, LSD, PCP, quaaludes, methcathinone, and GHB (gammahydroxy butyrate), as well as to amphetamine ...
Desio: town, Milano provincia, Lombardia (Lombardy) regione, northern Italy. The town's name derives from the Latin ad decimum, Desio being 10 (decimus) Roman miles north of Milan on the road to Como (one Roman mile was a thousand paces, approximately 4,860 ...
Desiosi, Compagnia dei: one of the Italian acting troupes performing commedia dell'arte (improvised popular comedy) in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This period is considered the golden age of the genre, and the performers were noted for their sophistication and varied ...
Desirade, La: island in the middle of the windward group of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea and a dependency of Guadeloupe, an overseas departement of France. It lies 6 miles (10 km) east of the island of Grande-Terre. La Desirade ...
Desjardins, Pete: American diver who won a silver medal in the springboard at the 1924 Olympics in Paris and gold medals in the springboard and platform events at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, an achievement that was not matched by a male ...
desk: a table, frame, or case with a sloping or horizontal top particularly designed to aid writing or public reading, and often containing drawers, compartments, or pigeonholes.
Deskey, Donald: American industrial designer who helped establish industrial design as a profession.
desktop publishing: the use of a personal computer to perform publishing tasks that would otherwise require much more complicated equipment and human effort. Desktop publishing allows an individual to combine text, numerical data, photographs, charts, and other visual elements in a document ...
Deslandres, Henri-Alexandre: French physicist and astrophysicist who in 1894 invented a spectroheliograph, an instrument that photographs the Sun in monochromatic light. (About a year earlier George E. Hale had independently invented a spectroheliograph in the United States.)
desman: either of two species of amphibious Eurasian moles that den on land but seek prey underwater instead of burrowing through soil. The protruding flexible snout is flat and grooved with a lobed tip. Desmans have tiny eyes and no external ...
Desmarest, Nicolas: French geologist whose discovery of the volcanic origin of basalt disproved the Neptunist theory that all rocks were formed by sedimentation from primeval oceans.
Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, Jean: French prose writer, poet, dramatist, Christian polemicist, and political figure. One of the original members and the first chancellor of the French Academy, Desmarets opened the long literary battle, since called the querelle des anciens et des modernes (see ancients ...
Desmarets, Nicolas, Marquis De Maillebois: minister of finance during the last seven years of the reign (1643-1715) of Louis XIV of France.
desmid: any of the beautiful, single-celled (sometimes filamentous or colonial), microscopic green algae of the order Zygnematales, class Chlorophyta, characterized by extensive variation in cell shape. Typically the cell is divided symmetrically into semicells connected at a central point. The three-layered ...
Desmond: an ancient territorial division of Ireland approximating the modern counties of Kerry and Cork. Between the 11th and 17th centuries, the name was often used for two quite distinct areas. Gaelic Desmond extended over the modern County Kerry south of ...
Desmond, Gerald Fitzgerald, 14th earl of: Irish Roman Catholic nobleman who led one of the three major Irish rebellions against English rule under Queen Elizabeth I.
Desmoulins, Camille: one of the most influential journalists and pamphleteers of the French Revolution.
Desnos, Robert: French poet who joined Andre Breton in the early Surrealist movement, soon becoming one of its most valuable members because of his ability to fall into a hypnotic trance, under which he could recite his dreams, write, and draw. Texts ...
Desnoyers, Auguste-Gaspard-Louis, Baron: French engraver, one of the most eminent line engravers of his time. Desnoyers studied engraving and drawing and, after visiting Italy, entered the studio of Pierre-Alexandre Tardieu in 1800. His fame was established in 1805 by an engraving after Raphael, ...
Despard, Edward Marcus: British army officer and colonial administrator and organizer of a conspiracy against the British government. Despard entered the army in 1766 and attained the rank of colonel. After serving in Jamaica, he was sent to Central America in 1781; there ...
Despenser, Hugh Le; and Despenser, Hugh Le: unpopular favourites of England's King Edward II, who were executed by Edward's opponents, Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.
Despiau, Charles: French sculptor and illustrator who is best known for portrait busts executed in a sensitive and classical style.
Desportes, Alexandre-Francois: French painter who specialized in portraying animals, hunts, and emblems of the chase; he was among the first 18th-century artists to introduce landscape studies using nature as a model.
Desportes, Philippe: French courtier poet whose light, facile verse prepared the way for the new taste of the 17th century in France and whose sonnets served as models for the late Elizabethan poets.
Desprez, Louis-Jean: French painter, stage designer, architect, and engraver, an important figure in the transition from the rational Neoclassicism of the mid-18th century in France to the more subjective and innovative pre-Romantic works of Etienne-Louis Boullee and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux.
Desrosiers, Leo-Paul: French-Canadian writer best known for his historical novels.
Dessalines, Jean-Jacques: emperor of Haiti who proclaimed his country's independence in 1804.
Dessau: city, Saxony-Anhalt Land (state), east-central Germany. It lies on the Mulde River at its confluence with the Elbe River, northeast of Halle. The German town, which developed from a Sorbian settlement, was first mentioned in 1213. From ...