Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Mason City ... Massim style

Mason City: city, seat (1855) of Cerro Gordo county, northern Iowa, U.S., along the Winnebago River, about 120 miles (195 km) north of Des Moines. The area was inhabited by Winnebago and Sioux peoples when Freemasons arrived to settle the site in ...
Mason ware: a sturdy English pottery known as Mason's Patent Ironstone China. It was first produced by C.J. Mason & Company in 1813 to provide a cheap substitute for Chinese porcelain, especially the larger vases. The decoration was a kind of chinoiserie, ...
Mason, Bobbie Ann: American short-story writer and novelist known for her evocation of rural Kentucky life.
Mason, Charlotte: American philanthropist who for a time encouraged many artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Known as "Godmother," she was a generous patron, but her controlling nature often caused conflict with her beneficiaries.
Mason, Daniel Gregory: composer in the German-influenced Boston group of U.S. composers.
Mason, George: American patriot and statesman who insisted on the protection of individual liberties in the composition of both the Virginia and U.S. Constitutions (1776, 1787); he was ahead of his time in opposing slavery and in rejecting the constitutional compromise that ...
Mason, James: British stage and motion-picture actor best known for his urbane characterizations. During his 50-year acting career he played in 106 films.
Mason, James Murray: antebellum U.S. senator from Virginia and, later, Confederate diplomat taken prisoner in the Trent Affair.
Mason, John Mitchell: U.S. minister and educator, who is best known for his work in raising standards of Protestant theological education in the U.S. He also was noted for his prowess as an orator.
Mason, Lowell: hymn composer, music publisher, and one of the founders of public-school music-education in the United States.
Mason, Max: American mathematical physicist, educator, and science administrator.
masonry: the art and craft of building and fabricating in stone, clay, brick, or concrete block. Construction of poured concrete, reinforced or unreinforced, is often also considered masonry.
Masoretic text: (from Hebrew masoreth, "tradition"), traditional Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible, meticulously assembled and codified, and supplied with diacritical marks to enable correct pronunciation. This monumental work was begun around the 6th century AD and completed in the 10th by ...
Maspero, Gaston: French Egyptologist and director general of excavations and antiquities for the Egyptian government, who was responsible for locating a collective royal tomb of prime historic importance.
masque: festival or entertainment in which disguised participants offer gifts to their host and then join together for a ceremonial dance. A typical masque consisted of a band of costumed and masked persons of the same sex who, accompanied by torchbearers, ...
mass: in physics, quantitative measure of inertia, a fundamental property of all matter. It is, in effect, the resistance that a body of matter offers to a change in its speed or position upon the application of a force. The greater ...
mass: the celebration of the Eucharist (q.v.) in the Roman Catholic church. The term mass is derived from the rite's Latin formula of dismissal, Ite, missa est ("Go, it is ended"). According to Roman Catholic teaching, the mass is a memorial ...
mass: in music, the setting, either polyphonic or in plainchant, of the liturgy of the Eucharist. The term most commonly refers to the mass of the Roman Catholic church, whose Western traditions used texts in Latin from about the 4th century ...
mass action, law of: fundamental law of chemical kinetics, formulated in the years 1864 to 1879 by the Norwegian scientists Cato M. Guldberg and Peter Waage. The law states that the rate, or velocity, of any simple chemical reaction is proportional to the product ...
mass flow: in botany, the most widely accepted explanation for the movement of sugars and other nutrient solutes through the phloem. The mass-flow hypothesis explains how foods move from source areas, where they are manufactured (mainly in the leaves) or stored (such ...
mass movement: bulk movements of soil and rock debris down slopes in response to the pull of gravity, or the rapid or gradual sinking of the Earth's ground surface in a predominantly vertical direction. Formerly, the term mass wasting referred to a ...
mass number: in nuclear physics, the sum of the numbers of protons and neutrons present in the nucleus of an atom. The mass number is commonly cited in distinguishing among the isotopes of an element, all of which have the same atomic ...
mass production: application of the principles of specialization, division of labour, and standardization of parts to the manufacture of goods. Such manufacturing processes attain high rates of output at low unit cost, with lower costs expected as volume rises. Mass production methods ...
mass spectrometry: analytic technique by which chemical substances are identified by the sorting of gaseous ions in electric and magnetic fields according to their mass-to-charge ratios. The instruments used in such studies are called mass spectrometers and mass spectrographs, and they operate ...
mass transit: the movement of people within urban areas using group travel technologies such as buses and trains. The essential feature of mass transportation is that many people are carried in the same vehicle (e.g., buses) or collection of attached vehicles (trains). ...
mass transit: transportation system, usually publicly but sometimes privately owned and operated, designed to move large numbers of people in various types of vehicles, along fixed and nonfixed routes in cities, suburbs, and larger metropolitan areas. Modern mass transit is an outgrowth ...
mass, conservation of: principle that the mass of an object or collection of objects never changes, no matter how the constituent parts rearrange themselves. Mass has been viewed in physics in two compatible ways. On the one hand, it is seen as a ...
Massa: city, capital of Massa-Carrara provincia, Toscana (Tuscany) regione, north-central Italy. Massa lies in the Frigido Valley at the foot of the Apuan Alps near the Ligurian coast, just southeast of Carrara and La Spezia. Mentioned in the 9th century, it ...
Massachuset: an Algonquian-speaking Indian tribe that in the early 17th century may have numbered 3,000 living in more than 20 villages distributed along what is now the Massachusetts coast. The cultivation of corn (maize) and other vegetables, hunting, and fishing were ...
Massachusetts: constituent state of the United States of America. It was one of the original 13 states and is one of the six New England states lying in the northeastern corner of the nation. Massachusetts is bounded on the north by ...
Massachusetts Bay: inlet of the North Atlantic Ocean, extending southward for about 60 miles (100 km) from Cape Ann to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, U.S. It includes Nahant, Boston, Plymouth, and Cape Cod bays and Gloucester and Salem harbours. The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway ...
Massachusetts Bay Colony: one of the original English settlements in present Massachusetts, settled in 1630 by a group of about 1,000 Puritan refugees from England under Governor John Winthrop. In 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Company had obtained from Charles a charter empowering the ...
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: privately controlled coeducational institution of higher learning famous for its scientific and technological training and research. It was chartered by the state of Massachusetts in 1861 and became a land-grant college in 1863. William Barton Rogers, MIT's founder and first ...
Massachusetts, University of: state university system consisting of five coeducational campuses at Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth (in North Dartmouth), Lowell, and Worcester. The main campus, at Amherst, provides a comprehensive array of courses within 10 colleges, schools, and faculties. It offers more than 80 ...
massage: in medicine, systematic and scientific manipulation of body tissues, performed with the hands for therapeutic effect on the nervous and muscular systems and on systemic circulation. It was used more than 3,000 years ago by the Chinese. Later, the Greek ...
massasauga: (Sistrurus catenatus), small North American rattlesnake of the family Viperidae, found in prairies, swamps, and woodlands from the Great Lakes to Arizona. It is about 45 to 75 cm (18 to 30 inches) long.
Massasoit: (b. c. 1590, near present Bristol, R.I., U.S.-d. 1661, near Bristol), Wampanoag Indian chief who throughout his life maintained peaceful relations with English settlers in the area of the Plymouth Colony, Mass.
Massawa: port city, Eritrea, in the Bay of Massawa on the Red Sea. It is connected to Asmara, the national capital, on the hinterland plateau (40 miles [64 km] west-southwest) by road, railroad, air, and aerial tramway. The town rests on ...
Massena: village and town (township), St. Lawrence county, northern New York, U.S., 76 miles (122 km) southwest of Montreal, Canada. It is the location of the headquarters of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, which operates and maintains the U.S. part ...
Massena, Andre, duc de Rivoli, prince d'Essling: leading French general of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.
Massenet, Jules: leading French opera composer of his generation, whose music is admired for its lyricism, sensuality, occasional sentimentality, and theatrical aptness.
Masseria, Joe: leading crime boss of New York City from the early 1920s until his murder in 1931.
Masses, The: American monthly journal of arts and politics, socialist in its outlook. It was known for its innovative treatment of illustration and for its news articles and social criticism.
masseter: (from Greek masasthai, "to chew"), prominent muscle of the jaw. The masseter arises from the zygomatic bone (cheekbone) and is inserted at the rear of the mandible (jawbone). Contraction of the muscle raises the mandible, and it ...
Massey, Raymond: Canadian-American actor, director, and producer.
Massey, Vincent: statesman who was the first Canadian to serve as governor-general of Canada (1952-59).
Massey, William Ferguson: New Zealand statesman, prime minister (1912-25), lifelong spokesman for agrarian interests, and opponent of left-wing movements. His Reform Party ministries included leadership of the country during World War I.
massicot: one of the two forms of lead oxide (PbO) that occurs as a mineral (the other form is litharge). Massicot forms by the oxidation of galena and other lead minerals as soft, yellow, earthy or scaly masses that are very ...
Massif Central: upland area in south-central France. Bordered by the lowlands of Aquitaine on the west, the Paris Basin and the Loire River valley on the north, the Rhone-Saone river valley on the east, and the Mediterranean coastlands of Languedoc on the ...
Massillon: city, Stark county, northeastern Ohio, U.S., just west of Canton, on the Tuscarawas River. Settled (1811) by New Englanders, it developed from two villages named Kendal and Brookfield and was named (1826), after its founding by James Duncan, for Bishop ...
Massim style: type of stylized, curvilinear carving found in the Massim region, one of the major stylistic areas of Papua New Guinea. The Massim region, located in the southeast, includes the Trobriand, D'Entrecasteaux, and Woodlark islands; the Louisiade Archipelago; and the easternmost ...