Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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gemmail ... Genet, Jean

gemmail: in stained glass, technique employing fused layers of coloured glass fragments illuminated from behind, creating an illusion of three-dimensionality in the design. Gemmail is frequently used to reproduce works from other pictorial media. The technique was developed in the late ...
Gempei War: (1180-85), final struggle in Japan between the Taira and Minamoto clans that resulted in the Minamoto's establishment of the Kamakura shogunate, a military dictatorship that dominated Japan from 1192 to 1333.
gemstone: any of various minerals highly prized for beauty, durability, and rarity. A few noncrystalline materials of organic origin (e.g., pearl, red coral, and amber) also are classified as gemstones.
Genda Minoru: Japanese naval officer and politician who was chosen by Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku to draft the plan for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor (in Oahu Island, Hawaii, U.S.), which crippled the American Pacific Fleet and precipitated the entry of the ...
gender: in language, a phenomenon in which the words of a certain part of speech, usually nouns, require the agreement, or concord, through grammatical marking (or inflection), of various other words related to them in a sentence. In languages that exhibit ...
gender identity: an individual's self-conception as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex. For most persons, gender identity and biological characteristics are the same. There are, however, circumstances in which an individual experiences little or no connection between sex ...
gene: unit of hereditary information that occupies a fixed position (locus) on a chromosome. Genes achieve their effects by directing the synthesis of proteins.
gene flow: the introduction of genetic material (by interbreeding) from one population of a species to another, thereby changing the composition of the gene pool of the receiving population. The introduction of new alleles through gene flow increases variability within the population ...
genealogy: the study of family origins and history. Genealogists compile lists of ancestors, which they arrange in pedigree charts or other written forms. The word genealogy comes from two Greek words-one meaning "race" or "family" and the other "theory" or "science." ...
genecentre: any of a number of areas on the Earth from which arose important crop plants and domestic animals. As few as four of these centres of origin have probably provided the great majority of the most useful plants and animals: ...
Genee, Dame Adeline: dancer, choreographer, and teacher who was founder-president of the Royal Academy of Dancing.
general: title and rank of a senior army officer, usually one who commands units larger than a regiment or its equivalent or units consisting of more than one arm of the service. Frequently, however, a general is a staff officer who ...
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade: set of multilateral trade agreements aimed at the abolition of quotas and the reduction of tariff duties among the contracting nations. When GATT was concluded by 23 countries at Geneva, in 1947 (to take effect on Jan. 1, 1948), it ...
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches: association of independent, conservative Baptist churches in the United States, organized in 1932 after 22 Baptist churches withdrew from the Northern (later American) Baptist Convention. These churches withdrew because they felt that the Northern Baptists were accepting the teachings of ...
General Confederation of Labour: major labour-union federation in Argentina. The CGT was formed in 1930. Its leadership was contested by socialist, anarchist, and syndicalist factions from 1935 until the early 1940s, when it came under the control of Juan Peron, an ambitious Cabinet minister. ...
General Confederation of Labour: French labour union federation. Formed in 1895, the CGT united in 1902 with the syndicalist-oriented Federation of Labour Exchanges (Federation des Bourses du Travail).
General Confederation of Labour-Workers' Force: French labour-union federation that is most influential among white-collar civil servants and clerical workers. It was formed in 1948 after a split within the General Confederation of Labour (Confederation Generale du Travail, or CGT). In 1947 the socialist minority withdrew ...
General Council of Congregational Christian Churches: Protestant church in the United States, organized in 1931 by a merger of the National Council of the Congregational Churches and the General Convention of the Christian Church. It was merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church into the United ...
General Dynamics Corp.: major American defense contractor. The company's headquarters are in Falls Church, Va.
General Electric Co.: major American corporation and one of the largest and most diversified corporations in the world. Its products include electrical and electronic equipment, plastics, aircraft engines, medical imaging equipment, and financial services. Headquarters are in Fairfield, Conn., U.S.
General Federation of Women's Clubs International: umbrella organization in the United States founded in 1890 to coordinate its members' efforts at promoting volunteer community service. During its more than century-long existence, the federation has focused its activities on areas such as the arts, the environment, education, ...
General Foods Corporation: former American manufacturer of packaged grocery and meat products.
General Grant National Memorial: mausoleum of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant in New York City, standing on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. It was designed by John H. Duncan. The monument, 150 feet (46 m) high in gray granite, was erected at a ...
General Italian Confederation of Labour: Italy's largest trade-union federation. It was organized in Rome in 1944 as a nationwide labour federation to replace the dissolved Fascist syndicates. Its founders, who included communists, social democrats, and Christian Democrats, intended it to be the sole labour federation ...
General Mills, Inc.: leading American producer of packaged consumer foods, especially flour, breakfast cereals, snacks, prepared mixes, and similar products. It is also one of the largest food service manufacturers in the world. Headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
General Motors Corporation: American corporation that became the world's largest motor-vehicle manufacturer in 1931 and maintained that status into the 21st century. It operates manufacturing and assembly plants and distribution centres throughout the United States, Canada, and many other countries. Its major products ...
General San Martin: cabecera (county seat) and partido (county) of Gran ("Greater") Buenos Aires, Argentina. It lies immediately northwest of the city of Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires provincia. The county seat and county began as an early rural settlement centred on the ...
General Santos: city, southern Mindanao, Philippines. The city is named for General Paulino Santos, who directed the pioneer settlement (mostly by Christian Filipino migrants) and development of the Koronadal Valley that began in the mid-1930s. General Santos city is located at the ...
General Sarmiento: partido (county) of Gran ("Greater") Buenos Aires, Argentina. It lies northwest of the city of Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires provincia. The early settlement of the county centred on the agricultural plantation San Jose del Pilar, established by Adolfo Sordeaux ...
General Security, Committee of: organ of the French Revolutionary government. It directed the political police and Revolutionary justice. Founded by the National Convention in 1792, the committee administered the Reign of Terror of 1793-94, along with the Committee of Public Safety. See also Revolutionary ...
general semantics: a philosophy of language-meaning that was developed by Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), a Polish-American scholar, and furthered by S.I. Hayakawa, Wendell Johnson, and others; it is the study of language as a representation of reality. Korzybski's theory was intended to improve ...
general staff: in the military, a group of officers that assists the commander of a division or larger unit by formulating and disseminating his policies, transmitting his orders, and overseeing their execution. Normally a general staff is organized along functional lines, with ...
general store: retail store in a small town or rural community that carries a wide variety of goods, including groceries. In the United States the general store was the successor of the early trading post, which served the pioneers and early settlers. ...
general strike: stoppage of work by a substantial proportion of workers in a number of industries in an organized endeavour to achieve economic or political objectives. A strike covering only one industry cannot properly be called a general strike.
General Stud Book: in horse breeding, prototype of the breeding record of purebred horses, or studbook (q.v.).
general will: theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 18th-century French political philosopher, that in a democratic society the state represents the general will of the citizens, and that in obeying its laws each citizen is pursuing his own real interest. Rousseau distinguished the "general ...
General, Municipal, and Boilermakers' Union: one of the largest trade unions in Great Britain and one of the two giant general unions (the other being the Transport and General Workers' Union). The General and Municipal Workers' Union was formed in 1924 by the merger of ...
generalite: the basic administrative unit of 17th- and 18th-century France. It was first established in the late 14th century to organize the collection of royal revenues. In the 15th century, four generalites covered most of France. An edict of 1542 established ...
generalization: in psychology, the tendency to respond in the same way to different but similar stimuli. For example, a dog conditioned to salivate to a tone of a particular pitch and loudness will also salivate with considerable regularity in response to ...
Generation of 1898: in Spain, the novelists, poets, essayists, and thinkers active at the time of the Spanish-American War (1898), who reinvigorated Spanish letters and restored Spain to a position of intellectual and literary prominence that it had not held for centuries.
generative grammar: a precisely formulated set of rules whose output is all (and only) the sentences of a language-i.e., of the language that it generates. There are many different kinds of generative grammar, including transformational grammar as developed by Noam Chomsky from ...
genero chico: (Spanish: "little genre"), Spanish literary genre of light dramatic or operatic one-act playlets, as contrasted with the genero grande of serious drama or opera. Developed primarily in the theatres of Madrid during the later 19th century, genero chico works usually ...
Genesee: county, northwestern New York state, U.S., located in a lowland region with several swamps, midway between Buffalo and Rochester. It is drained by Tonawanda, Oak Orchard, and Oatka creeks. The major forest types are oak and hickory. Public lands include ...
Genesee River: river mainly in New York state, U.S. The Genesee flows generally north from its headwaters in Pennsylvania, crosses the New York State Canal System, and bisects Rochester to enter Lake Ontario after a course of 158 miles (254 km). At ...
Genesis: the first book of the Old Testament. Its name derives from the opening words: "In the beginning&elipsis;." Genesis narrates the primeval history of the world (chapters 1-11) and the patriarchal history of the Israelite people (chapters 12-50). The primeval history ...
Genesis: British progressive rock group noted for their atmospheric sound in the 1970s and extremely popular albums and singles of the 1980s and '90s. The principal members were Peter Gabriel (b. Feb. 13, 1950, Woking, Surrey, Eng., ), Tony Banks (b. ...
Genesis Apocryphon: pseudepigraphal work (not accepted in any canon of scripture), one of the most important works of the Essene community of Jews, part of whose library was discovered in 1947 in caves at Qumran, near the Dead Sea, in Palestine. The ...
Genesius, Joseph: Byzantine scholar whose history of Constantinople is one of the few known sources on the relatively obscure 9th-century period of Byzantine history.
genet: any of about five species of lithe, catlike carnivores of the genus Genetta, family Viverridae. Genets are elongate, short-legged animals with long, tapering tails; pointed noses; large, rounded ears; and retractile claws. Coloration varies among species but usually is pale ...
Genet, Edmond-Charles: French emissary to the United States during the French Revolution who severely strained Franco-American relations by conspiring to involve the United States in France's war against Great Britain.
Genet, Jean: French criminal and social outcast turned writer who, as a novelist, transformed erotic and often obscene subject matter into a poetic vision of the universe and, as a dramatist, became a leading figure in the avant-garde theatre, especially the Theatre ...