Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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hermaphroditism ... heroic verse

hermaphroditism: the condition of having both male and female reproductive organs. Hermaphroditic plants (most flowering plants) are called monoecious, or bisexual. Hermaphroditic animals, mostly invertebrates such as worms, bryozoans (moss animals), trematodes (flukes), snails, slugs, and barnacles, are usually parasitic, slow-moving, ...
Hermaphroditus: in Greek mythology, a being partly male, partly female. The idea of such a being originated in the East; in the Greek area it appeared in Cyprus, and, although it was a favourite subject in later Greek art, it was ...
Hermenegild, Saint: Visigothic prince, son of Leovigild of Spain.
hermeneutics: the study of the general principles of biblical interpretation. For both Jews and Christians throughout their histories, the primary purpose of hermeneutics, and of the exegetical methods employed in interpretation, has been to discover the truths and values of the ...
Hermes: Greek god, son of Zeus and Maia; often identified with the Roman Mercury (q.v.) and with Casmilus or Cadmilus, one of the Cabeiri (q.v.). His name is probably derived from herma (see herm), the Greek word for a heap of ...
Hermes, Georg: German Roman Catholic theologian, originator of the theological system called Hermesianism, which attempted to demonstrate the rational necessity of Christianity. His theology was deeply influenced by the philosophical works of Immanuel Kant and J.G. Fichte.
Hermetic writings: works of revelation on occult, theological, and philosophical subjects ascribed to the Egyptian god Thoth (Greek Hermes Trismegistos [Hermes the Thrice-Greatest]), who was believed to be the inventor of writing and the patron of all the arts dependent on writing. ...
Hermeticism: modernist poetic movement originating in Italy in the early 20th century, whose works were characterized by unorthodox structure, illogical sequences, and highly subjective language. Although it influenced a wide circle of poets, even outside Italy, it remained inaccessible to the ...
hermit: any of several hummingbird species of the genus Phaethornis. See hummingbird.
hermit: one who retires from society, primarily for religious reasons, and lives in solitude. In Christianity the word (from Greek eremites, "living in the desert") is used interchangeably with anchorite, although the two were originally distinguished on the basis of location: ...
hermit crab: any crab of the families Paguridae and Coenobitidae (order Decapoda of the subclass Crustacea). The crabs use empty snail shells (e.g., whelk or periwinkle) or other hollow objects as a shelter for partial containment and protection of the body.
Hermitage: art museum in St. Petersburg founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great as a court museum. It adjoined the Winter Palace and served as a private gallery for the art amassed by the empress. Under Nicholas I the Hermitage was ...
Hermite, Charles: French mathematician whose work in the theory of functions includes the application of elliptic functions to provide the first solution to the general equation of the fifth degree, the quintic equation.
Hermocrates: leader of the moderate democrats of Syracuse, Sicily; he played an important role in saving the city from conquest by the Athenians between 415 and 413 BC.
Hermon, Mount: snowcapped ridge on the Lebanon-Syria border west of Damascus. It rises to 9,232 feet (2,814 m) and is the highest point on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is sometimes considered the southernmost extension of the Anti-Lebanon range. ...
Hermonthis: ancient town in Upper Egypt, near Thebes on the west bank of the Nile. It was the seat of a sun cult and was a crowning place of kings. The war god Mentu was worshiped there in hawk-headed human form ...
Hermopolis: chief port of the island of Syros (part of the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea) and capital of Cyclades nomos (department), Greece. The seat of both a Greek Orthodox and a Roman Catholic archbishopric, it was ...
Hermopolis Magna: ancient town of Upper Egypt, located on the Nile River south of Al-Minya in Al-Minya muhafazah (governorate). It was known as Khmunu ("City of the Eight") and was the capital of the Hare nome (province), the 15th ...
Hermosillo: city, capital of Sonora state, northwestern Mexico. Situated on the coastal plain, at an elevation of 778 ft (237 m) above sea level, near the confluence of the Sonora and San Miguel rivers, it is south of Nogales on the ...
Hernandez Colon, Rafael: Puerto Rican politician and lawyer, who served as governor of Puerto Rico (1973-77; 1985-93).
Hernandez, Felisberto: one of the most original Latin American short-story writers. Hernandez is known for his bizarre tales of quietly deranged individuals who inject their obsessions into everyday life.
Hernandez, Gregorio: Spanish sculptor whose works are among the finest examples of polychromed wood sculpture created during the Baroque period. His images are characterized by their emotional intensity, spiritual expressiveness, and sense of dramatic gravity, as well as by their illusionistic realism.
Hernandez, Jose: Argentine poet, best known for his depiction of the gauchos.
Hernandez, Miguel: Spanish poet and dramatist who combined traditional lyric forms with 20th-century subjectivity.
Hernandez, Orlando: Cuban baseball pitcher who amassed a won-lost record of 129-47, the best winning percentage in the history of the Cuban League. After defecting from Cuba in 1997, he pitched in the major leagues, where he gained a reputation as a ...
Herne: city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), western Germany. It lies at the junction of the Rhine-Herne and the Dortmund-Ems canals, about 10 miles (16 km) west of Dortmund, in the industrial Ruhr district. Known as Haranni in the ...
Herne Bay: town, Canterbury City district, on the north coast of the administrative and historic county of Kent, southeastern England. It grew rapidly after the railway linked it with London in 1833. Reculver (3 mi [5 km] east) is the site of ...
Herne The Hunter: phantom hunter who haunts Windsor Great Park, impersonated by Falstaff in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. Though Herne may have been an actual keeper of the forest, he is probably a local manifestation of the Wild Huntsman myth known ...
Herne, James A.: U.S. playwright who helped bridge the gap between 19th-century melodrama and the 20th-century drama of ideas.
hernia: protrusion of an organ or tissue from its normal cavity. The protrusion may extend outside the body or between cavities within the body, as when loops of intestine escape from the abdominal cavity into the chest through a defect in ...
herniated disk: intervertebral disk the rubbery centre or nucleus of which has slipped out from between the vertebrae so that it presses against the spinal cord. This displacement causes pain in the arms if the protrusion occurs at the level of the ...
Hernici: ancient people of Italy, whose territory was in Latium between the Fucine Lake (modern Fucino) and the Trerus (modern Sacco) River, bounded by the Volsci on the south and by the Aequi and the Marsi on the north. In 486 ...
Herning: city, Ringkobing amtskommune (county), west central Jutland, Denmark. Large-scale reclamation of surrounding heaths stimulated its growth from a rural village in the 1870s to a commercial city. A road and rail junction, its manufactures include textiles and machinery. Local lignite ...
hero: in literature, broadly, the main character in a literary work; the term is also used in a specialized sense for any figure celebrated in the ancient legends of a people or in such early heroic epics as Gilgamesh, the Iliad, ...
Hero and Leander: two lovers celebrated in Greek legend. Hero, virgin priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos, was seen at a festival by Leander of Abydos; they fell in love, and he swam the Hellespont at night to visit her, guided by a light ...
Herod: Roman-appointed king of Judaea (37-4 BC), who built many fortresses, aqueducts, theatres, and other public buildings and generally raised the prosperity of his land but who was the centre of political and family intrigues in his later years. The New ...
Herod Agrippa I: king of Judaea (41-44), a clever diplomat who through his friendship with the Roman imperial family obtained the kingdom of his grandfather, Herod I the Great. He displayed great acumen in conciliating the Romans and Jews.
Herod Agrippa II: king of Chalcis in southern Lebanon from AD 50 and tetrarch of Batanaea and Trachonitis in south Syria from AD 53, who unsuccessfully mediated with the rebels in the Jewish Revolt of AD 66-70. He was a great-grandson of Herod ...
Herod Antipas: son of Herod I the Great who became tetrarch of Galilee and ruled throughout Jesus of Nazareth's ministry.
Herod Archelaus: son and principal heir of Herod I the Great as king of Judaea, deposed by Rome because of his unpopularity with the Jews.
Herodas: Greek poet, probably of the Aegean island of Cos, author of mimes-short dramatic scenes in verse of a world of low life similar to that portrayed in the New Comedy. His work was discovered in manuscript in 1890 and is ...
Herodes Atticus: most celebrated of the orators and writers of the Second Sophistic, a movement that revitalized the teaching and practice of rhetoric in Greece in the 2nd century AD.
Herodian: one of a party of influential Jewish supporters of the Herodian dynasty (c. 55 BC-c. AD 93), which ruled in all or parts of Palestine and neighbouring areas. Noted in the New Testament as opponents of Jesus, they probably were ...
Herodias: the wife of Herod Antipas, who was tetrarch (ruler appointed by Rome) of Galilee, in northern Palestine, from 4 BC to AD 39. She conspired to arrange the execution of John the Baptist. Her marriage to Herod Antipas (himself divorced), ...
Herodotus: Greek author of the first great narrative history produced in the ancient world, the History of the Greco-Persian Wars.
Heroet, Antoine: Renaissance court poet whose works are representative of the amalgam of Platonism and Christian humanism that produced the modern concept of Platonic love.
heroic couplet: a couplet of rhyming iambic pentameters often forming a distinct rhetorical as well as metrical unit. The origin of the form in English poetry is unknown, but Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century was the first to make extensive use ...
heroic poetry: narrative verse that is elevated in mood and uses a dignified, dramatic, and formal style to describe the deeds of aristocratic warriors and rulers. It is usually composed without the aid of writing and is chanted or recited to the ...
heroic prose: narrative prose tales that are the counterpart of heroic poetry in subject, outlook, and dramatic style. Whether composed orally or written down, the stories are meant to be recited, and they employ many of the formulaic expressions of oral tradition. ...
heroic stanza: in poetry, a rhymed quatrain in heroic verse with rhyme scheme abab. The form was used by William Shakespeare and John Dryden, among others, and was also called an elegiac stanza after the publication in the mid-18th century of Thomas ...
heroic verse: the verse form in which the heroic poetry of a particular language is, or according to critical opinion should be, composed. In classical poetry this was dactylic hexameter, in French the alexandrine, in Italian the hendecasyllabic line, and in English ...