Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Fouta ... Frame, Janet

Fouta: semidesert region flanking the middle course of the Senegal River and lying north of the Ferlo region, in northern Senegal. The banks of the Senegal River are well-watered and fertile in the Fouta region, yet the thin, sandy clay of ...
Fouta Djallon: mountainous region of west-central Guinea. Consisting of a series of stepped sandstone plateaus with many picturesque trenches and gorges, the region serves as the watershed for some of western Africa's greatest rivers. The Fouta Djallon covers an area of 30,000 ...
Fowey: English Channel port, Restormel borough, administrative and historic county of Cornwall, England. Fowey lies on the west bank of the sheltered Fowey estuary. It held a leading position among Cornish ports from the 14th to the 16th century because of ...
fowl: in animal husbandry, birds raised commercially or domestically for meat, eggs, and feathers. Chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese are of primary commercial importance, while guinea fowl and squabs are chiefly of local interest.
Fowler, H W: English lexicographer and philologist whose works on the use and style of the English language had far-reaching influence. He was a man of moral and intellectual strength whose wit and grace were evident throughout his writings.
Fowler, John: English engineer who helped to develop the steam-hauled plow. He began his career in the grain trade but later trained as an engineer. In 1850 he joined Albert Fry in Bristol to found a works to produce steam-hauled implements. Later, ...
Fowler, Lydia Folger: physician, writer, and reformer, one of the first American women to hold a medical degree and to become a professor of medicine in an American college.
Fowler, Sir John, 1st Baronet: English civil engineer who helped design and build the underground London Metropolitan Railway and was joint designer of the Forth Bridge in Scotland.
Fowler, William A.: American nuclear astrophysicist who, with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 for his role in formulating a widely accepted theory of element generation.
Fowles, John: English novelist, whose allusive and descriptive works combine psychological probings-chiefly of sex and love-with an interest in social and philosophical issues.
Fox: an Algonquian-speaking tribe of North American Indians who called themselves Meshkwakihug, or Mesquakie (Red-Earth People). When they first met Europeans in 1667, they lived in the forest zone of what is now northeastern Wisconsin.
fox: any of various members of the dog family (Canidae) resembling small to medium-sized bushy-tailed dogs with long fur, pointed ears, and narrow snouts. In a restricted sense, the name refers to the 10 or so species classified as "true" foxes ...
fox bat: any of numerous tropical Old World bats belonging to the family Pteropodidae (q.v.).
Fox Broadcasting Company: American television broadcasting company founded in 1986 by the media magnate Rupert Murdoch. It is a subsidiary of Fox, Inc., and it is headquartered in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Fox Islands: easternmost group of the Aleutian Islands, southwestern Alaska, U.S. The islands extend about 300 miles (500 km) southwest from the Alaska Peninsula and are part of the extensive Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. The island group includes Akutan, Unalaska, and ...
fox shark: species of thresher shark (q.v.).
fox terrier: breed of dog developed in England to drive foxes from their dens. The two varieties of fox terrier, wirehaired and smooth-haired, are structurally similar but differ in coat texture and in ancestry. The wirehaired, or wire, variety was developed from ...
Fox, Charles James: Britain's first foreign secretary (1782, 1783, 1806), a famous champion of liberty, whose career, on the face of it, was nevertheless one of almost unrelieved failure. He conducted against King George III a long and brilliant vendetta; for this reason ...
Fox, Della May: actress and singer whose professional ability and childlike persona earned her great popularity on the late 19th-century American stage.
Fox, George: English preacher and missionary and founder of the Society of Friends (or Quakers); his personal religious experience made him hostile to church conventions and established his reliance on what he saw as inward light or God-given inspiration over scriptural authority ...
Fox, Margaret; and Fox, Catherine: American mediums whose highly publicized-and profitable-seances triggered an enormously popular fad for spiritualism in the mid-19th century.
Fox, Sir William: author and statesman who helped shape the Constitution Act of 1852, which established home rule for New Zealand. He also served four short terms as the nation's prime minister (1856, 1861-62, 1869-72, 1873).
Fox, Vicente: Mexican businessman and politician, who became president of Mexico in 2000. His term in office marked the end of 71 years of uninterrupted rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Fox, William: American motion-picture executive who built a multimillion-dollar empire controlling a large portion of the exhibition, distribution, and production of film facilities during the era of silent film.
fox-trot: ballroom dance popular in Europe and America since its introduction around 1914. Allegedly named for the comedian Harry Fox, whose 1913 Ziegfeld Follies act included a trotting step, the fox-trot developed less strenuous walking steps for its ballroom version. The ...
Foxe, John: English Puritan preacher and author of The Book of Martyrs, a graphic and polemic account of those who suffered for the cause of Protestantism. Widely read, often the most valued book beside the Bible in the households of English Puritans, ...
Foxe, Richard: English ecclesiastical statesman, one of the chief ministers of King Henry VII (ruled 1485-1509) and founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1515-16).
foxglove: any of 20 to 30 species of herbaceous plants of the genus Digitalis (family Scrophulariaceae, q.v.), especially D. purpurea, the common, or purple, foxglove, which is cultivated commercially as the source of the heart-stimulating drug digitalis. Foxgloves are native to ...
foxhound: either of two breeds of dogs, one English and one American, that are traditionally kept in packs for the centuries-old ride to hounds of fox-hunting sportsmen. The English foxhound is the product of long, careful breeding. It stands 21 to ...
foxhunting: chase of the fox by horsemen with a pack of hounds. In England, the home of the sport, foxhunting dates from at least the 15th century. In its inception, it was probably an adjunct to stag and hare hunting, with ...
foxtail: any of the weedy grasses in the genera Alopecurus and Setaria of the family Poaceae. There are about 25 species of Alopecurus, distributed throughout the North Temperate Zone. Most species are perennial weeds, with dense, cylindrical, often brushlike, flower clusters ...
Foxx, Jimmie: U.S. professional baseball player, the second man in major league history to hit 500 home runs. (Babe Ruth was the first.) A right-handed hitter who played mostly at first base, Foxx appeared in his first major league game in 1925 ...
Foxx, Redd: American comedian and television actor known for his raunchy stand-up routines. His style of comedy, often described as "blue" for its foul language and highly adult subject matter, influenced generations of comics. He was also the star of the hit ...
Foy, Eddie: U.S. comedian famous on the vaudeville circuit in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Foy, Maximilien: French military leader, writer, and statesman who rose through the ranks of the imperial army during the Napoleonic Wars (1800-15) and then emerged as a leading spokesman of the liberal opposition during the early years after the Bourbon Restoration (1815).
foyer: intermediate area between the exterior and interior of a building, especially a theatre. Originally the term was applied only to that area in French theatres, comparable to the greenroom in English theatres, where actors relaxed when they were offstage. Because ...
Foyle, Lough: inlet on the north coast of Ireland between the Inishowen Peninsula (mainly County Donegal, Ireland) to the west and the district councils of Limavady and Londonderry (until 1973 in County Londonderry), Northern Ireland, to the east and southeast. The lough ...
Foyt, A. J.: versatile and successful American automobile racing driver who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, 1964, 1967, and 1977, the first four-time winner.
Fra Mauro: crater on the Moon that appears to be heavily eroded; it was named for a 15th-century Italian monk and mapmaker. About 80 km (50 miles) in diameter, Fra Mauro lies at about 6° S, 17° W, in the Nubium Basin ...
Fracastoro, Girolamo: Italian physician, poet, astronomer, and geologist, who proposed a scientific germ theory of disease more than 300 years before its empirical formulation by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.
fractal: in mathematics, any of a class of complex geometric shapes that commonly have "fractional dimension," a concept first introduced by the mathematician Felix Hausdorff in 1918. Fractals are distinct from the simple figures of classical, or Euclidean, geometry-the square, the ...
fracture: in mineralogy, appearance of a surface broken in directions other than along cleavage planes. There are several kinds of fractures: conchoidal (curved concavities resembling shells-e.g., flint, quartz, glass); even (rough, approximately plane surfaces); uneven (rough and completely irregular surfaces, the ...
fracture: in pathology, a break in a bone caused by stress. Certain normal and pathological conditions may predispose bones to fracture. Children have relatively weak bones because of incomplete calcification, and older adults, especially women past menopause, develop osteoporosis, a weakening ...
fracture-dislocation: a severe injury in which both fracture and dislocation take place simultaneously. Frequently, a loose piece of bone remains jammed between the ends of the dislocated bones and may have to be removed surgically before the dislocation can be reduced. ...
Fraenkel-Conrat, Heinz L.: German-American biochemist who helped to reveal the complementary roles of the structural components of viruses (a "core" of ribonucleic acid [RNA] enveloped by a protein "coat").
fragile-X syndrome: a chromosomal disorder associated with a fragile site on the end of the X chromosome. The major symptom of the syndrome is mental retardation.
Fragonard, Jean-Honore: French Rococo painter whose most familiar works, such as "The Swing" (c. 1766), are characterized by delicate hedonism.
frame design: decorative treatment of frames for mirrors and pictures. Before the 15th century in Europe, frames hardly existed separately from their architectural setting and, with the altarpieces or the predellas they surrounded, formed an integral part of the decorative scheme of ...
frame harp: musical instrument in which the neck and soundbox are joined by a column, or forepillar, which braces against the tension of the strings. It is one of the principal forms of harp and in modern times is found exclusively in ...
frame story: overall unifying story within which one or more tales are related. In the single story, the opening and closing constitutes a frame. In the cyclical frame story-that is, a story in which several tales are related-some frames are externally imposed ...
Frame, Janet: leading New Zealand writer of novels, short fiction, and poetry. Her works were noted for their explorations of alienation and isolation.