Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Oda Nobunaga ... Off-Broadway

Oda Nobunaga: Japanese warrior, member of the Fujiwara family, who overthrew the Ashikaga shogunate and ended a long period of feudal wars by unifying half of Japan's provinces under his rule. As virtual dictator, Nobunaga restored stable government and established the conditions ...
Odaenathus, Septimius: prince of the Roman colony of Palmyra (q.v.), in what is now Syria, who prevented the Sasanian Persians from permanently conquering the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.
Odantapuri: in ancient times a celebrated Buddhist centre of learning (vihara) in India, identified with modern Bihar town in the Patna district of Bihar state. It was founded in the 7th century AD by Gopala, the first ruler of the Pala ...
Odate: city, northern Akita ken (prefecture), northern Honshu, Japan, on the Yoneshiro River. As a castle town during the Edo (Tokugawa) era (1603-1867), it served as a market for the surrounding agricultural region. The city is now a ...
Odawara: city, southwestern Kanagawa ken (prefecture), east-central Honshu, Japan. It is located on the coast of Sagami Bay, between the Sakawa and Haya rivers, about 28 miles (45 km) southwest of Yokohama. The city was a local political ...
ode: ceremonious poem on an occasion of public or private dignity in which personal emotion and general meditation are united. The Greek word ode, which has been accepted in most modern European languages, meant a choric song, usually accompanied by a ...
Odendaalsrus: town and mining centre of the Free State goldfields, north-central Free State province, South Africa, at 4,411 ft (1,344 m) above sea level. Although it obtained municipal status in 1912, Odendaalsrus remained little more than a village until 1946, when ...
Odense: city, northern Funen Island, Denmark, on the Odense River. The site was sacred in pagan times as the vi, or sanctuary, of Odin, the Norse god of war, but was first recorded in history about AD 1000. ...
Odenwald: wooded upland region in Germany, about 50 mi (80 km) long and 25 mi wide, situated mainly in Hesse Land (state) with small portions extending into the states of Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg. A popular tourist area, it extends between the ...
Oder River: river of east-central Europe. It is one of the most significant rivers in the catchment basin of the Baltic Sea, second only to the Vistula in discharge and length. For the first 70 miles (112 kilometres) from its source, it ...
Oder-Havel Canal: German waterway northeast of Berlin, linking the Havel and Oder rivers. It is 52 mi (83 km) long, 108 ft (33 m) wide, and 6 12 ft deep, and is navigable for vessels of up to 1,000 tons. Originally called ...
Oder-Neisse Line: Polish-German border devised by the Allied powers at the end of World War II; it transferred a large section of German territory to Poland and was a matter of contention between the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the ...
Odessa: oblast (province) in southwestern Ukraine. The oblast is bordered by the Black Sea on the east and southeast, by Moldova on the west, and by the Romanian frontier on the Danube River delta on the southwest. The oblast is divided ...
Odessa: (German: "Organization of Former SS Members"), clandestine escape organization of the SS (q.v.) underground, founded probably in early 1947 in Germany. A large organizational network was set up to help former SS and Gestapo members and other high Nazi functionaries ...
Odessa: seaport and administrative centre of Odessa oblast (province), southwestern Ukraine. It stands on a shallow indentation of the Black Sea coast at a point approximately 19 miles (31 km) north of the Dniester River estuary and about 275 miles (443 ...
Odessa: city, seat (1891) of Ector county and also partly in Midland county, western Texas, U.S. It lies on the southern High Plains, just southwest of Midland. The site was presumably named in 1881 by Russian railroad construction workers who noted ...
Odessa Meteor Crater: shallow, cone-shaped impact crater in the High Plains just southwest of Odessa, Texas, U.S., produced by a meteorite. It is about 17 feet (5 metres) deep and 560 feet (170 metres) in diameter; its rim rises only 2 to 3 ...
Odets, Clifford: leading dramatist of the theatre of social protest in the United States during the 1930s. His important affiliation with the celebrated Group Theatre contributed to that company's considerable influence on the American stage.
odeum: (Latin: "concert hall," from Greek oideion, "school of music"), comparatively small theatre of ancient Greece and Rome, in which musicians and orators performed and competed. It has been suggested that these theatres were originated because early Greek musical instruments could ...
Odienne: town, northwestern Cote d'Ivoire, at the intersection of roads from Mali, Guinea, and the Ivorian towns of Korhogo and Man. A traditional trading centre (yams, cassava, cattle, and sheep) among the Muslim Malinke people, it was part of the greater ...
Odin: one of the principal gods in Norse mythology. His exact nature and role, however, are difficult to determine because of the complex picture of him given by the wealth of archaeological and literary sources. The Roman historian Tacitus stated that ...
Odinga, Oginga: African nationalist politician who was a leader in the opposition against the single-party rule of Jomo Kenyatta and his successor Daniel arap Moi.
Odo Of Bayeux: half brother of William the Conqueror and bishop of Bayeux, Normandy. He probably commissioned the famed Bayeux tapestry, which pictures the Norman Conquest of England, for the dedication of his cathedral (1077).
Odo Of Cluny, Saint: second abbot of Cluny (France), who gained for Cluniac monasteries exemption from all but papal authority and whom Pope John XI authorized to reform monasteries in Gaul and Italy, thereby contributing to the great influence of Cluny during the 10th ...
Odoacer: first barbarian king of Italy. The date on which he assumed power, 476, is traditionally considered the end of the Western Roman Empire.
Odonata: insect order comprising the dragonflies (suborder Anisoptera) and the damselflies (suborder Zygoptera). The adults are easily recognized by their two pairs of narrow, transparent wings, sloping thorax, and long, usually slender body; the abdomen is almost always longer than any ...
Odontoglossum: genus embracing as many as 300 species of orchids, family Orchidaceae, that are primarily native to mountainous areas of tropical America. Many orchids of other genera have been crossed with species of Odontoglossum to obtain beautiful hybrid flowers. Hundreds of ...
odontolite: fossil bone or tooth that consists of the phosphate mineral apatite (q.v.) coloured blue by vivianite. It resembles turquoise but may be distinguished chemically.
odontostome: any member of the protistan order Odontostomatida. These small, wedge-shaped, ciliated protozoans were called Ctenostomatida until the name was found also to designate a bryozoan order. Odontostomes are usually found solely in fresh water with a high rate of organic ...
Odoric of Pordenone: Franciscan friar and traveler, whose account of his journey to China enjoyed wide popularity and appears to have been plagiarized in the 14th-century English work The Voyage and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Knight, generally known as ...
odour: the property of certain substances, in very small concentrations, to stimulate chemical sense receptors that sample the air or water surrounding an animal. In insects and other invertebrates and in aquatic animals, the perception of small chemical concentrations often merges ...
Odria, Manuel A.: president of Peru from 1948 to 1956.
Oduber Quiros, Daniel: president of Costa Rica (1974-78), member of the founding junta of its Second Republic (1948), and a founder of the National Liberation Party (PLN).
Odum, Howard W.: American sociologist who was a specialist in the social problems of the southern United States and a pioneer of sociological education in the South. He worked to replace the Southern sectionalism with a sophisticated regional approach to social planning, race ...
Odysseus: hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey and one of the most frequently portrayed figures in Western literature. According to Homer, Odysseus was king of Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticleia (the daughter of Autolycus of Parnassus), and father, by ...
Oe Kenzaburo: Japanese novelist whose works express the disillusionment and rebellion of his post-World War II generation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.
Oeben, Jean-Francois: influential French cabinetmaker noted for his outstanding marquetry and for his ingenious mechanical devices.
Oecolampadius, John: German humanist, preacher, and patristic scholar who, as a close friend of the Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli, led the Reformation in Basel.
oedemerid beetle: any member of the approximately 1,500 widely distributed species of the insect family Oedemeridae (order Coleoptera). The oedemerids, slender and soft bodied, are usually pale, although some species have blue, yellow, orange, or red markings.
Oedipus: in Greek mythology, the king of Thebes who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. Homer related that Oedipus' wife and mother hanged herself when the truth of their relationship became known, though Oedipus apparently continued to rule at ...
Oedipus complex: in psychoanalytic theory, a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex; a crucial stage in the normal developmental process. Sigmund Freud introduced the ...
Oedogonium: genus of filamentous green algae, commonly found in quiet waters, either attached to other plants or as a free-floating mass. Each cylindrical cell, with the exception of the basal cell that serves as a holdfast, contains a netlike chloroplast and ...
Oehlenschlager, Adam Gottlob: poet and dramatist who was a leader of the Romantic movement in Denmark and traditionally has been considered the great Danish national poet.
oeil-de-boeuf window: in architecture, a small circular or oval window, usually resembling a wheel, with glazing bars (bars framing the panes of glass) as spokes radiating outward from an empty hub, or circular centre. In French, oeil-de-boeuf means "eye of the steer," ...
Oeneus: in Greek legend, king of Calydon, husband of Althaea, and father of Meleager-the leader of the Calydonian boar hunt. He was also independently connected with the Greek hero Heracles as the father of Heracles' bride Deianeira, whom he won from ...
Oenone: in Greek mythology, a fountain nymph of Mount Ida, the daughter of the River Oeneus, and the beloved of Paris, a son of King Priam of Troy. Oenone and Paris had a son, Corythus, but Paris soon deserted her for ...
oersted: unit of magnetic-field strength, in the centimetre-gram-second system of physical units. Named for the 19th-century Danish physicist Hans Christian Orsted, it is defined as the intensity of a magnetic field in a vacuum in which a unit magnetic pole (one ...
Oerter, Al: American discus thrower who won four consecutive Olympic gold medals (1956, 1960, 1964, and 1968), setting an Olympic record each time. During his career he set new world records four times (1962-64). He was the first to throw the discus ...
Oeser, Adam Friedrich: painter, sculptor, and engraver who opposed Mannerism in art. He allied himself with the Neoclassical archaeologist and art historian Johann Winckelmann in advocating art reform through the study of ancient masterpieces, although his own work shows little Greek influence.
Oeuvre, Theatre de l': French Symbolist theatre founded in Paris in 1893 by Aurelien Lugne-Poe and directed by him until 1929. An actor and stage manager with Andre Antoine's Theatre Libre, Lugne-Poe was introduced to Symbolist theatre at Paul Fort's Theatre d'Art in the ...
Off-Broadway: in the theatre of the United States, small professional productions that have served for years as New York City's alternative to the commercially oriented theatres of Broadway. The plays, usually produced on low budgets in small theatres, have tended to ...