Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Penrith ... Pepi I

Penrith: town, Eden district, administrative county of Cumbria, historic county of Cumberland, England. It is situated on a main route to Scotland, at the foot of the 937-foot (286-metre) Penrith Beacon overlooking the mountains of the scenic Lake District.
Penrose, Boies: American legislator and longtime party boss of Pennsylvania. He served as U.S. senator from Pennsylvania from 1897 to 1921.
Penrose, Sir Roger: British mathematician and relativist who in the 1960s calculated many of the basic features of black holes.
Penryn: English Channel port, Carrick district, administrative and historic county of Cornwall, England. It lies at the head of the River Penryn's estuary. The town owes its development to the bishops of Exeter, who granted the first charter (1265). James I ...
Pensacola: city, seat (1822) of Escambia county, extreme northwestern Florida, U.S. It lies on Pensacola Bay (an arm of the Gulf of Mexico), about 35 miles (55 km) west of Fort Walton Beach and 60 miles (100 km) southeast of Mobile, ...
pensee: a thought expressed in literary form. A pensee can be short and in a specific form, such as an aphorism or epigram, or it can be as long as a paragraph or a page. The term originated with French mathematician ...
pension: series of periodic money payments made to a person who retires from employment because of age, disability, or the completion of an agreed span of service. The payments generally continue for the remainder of the natural life of the recipient, ...
pensionary: powerful political office in the Dutch Republic (United Provinces; 1579-1795). Pensionaries, originally the secretaries and legal advisers of the town corporations, were first appointed in the 15th century. They were members of the town delegations in the provincial States (assemblies). ...
Penstemon: the beard-tongue genus of the figwort order (Scrophulariales), containing about 250 species of plants native to North America, particularly the western United States. The flowers are usually large and showy, tubular, and bilaterally symmetrical and have four fertile stamens and ...
Pentaceratops: five-horned herbivorous dinosaur found as fossils in North America and possibly eastern Asia dating from the Late Cretaceous Period (99 million to 65 million years ago). Pentaceratops was about 6 metres (20 feet) long and had one horn on its ...
Pentagon: large five-sided building in Arlington county, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., that serves as the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, including all three military services-Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Pentagon Papers: papers that contain a history of the U.S. role in Indochina from World War II until May 1968 and that were commissioned in 1967 by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. They were turned over (without authorization) to The ...
pentameter: in poetry, a line of verse containing five metrical feet. In English verse, in which pentameter has been the predominant metre since the 16th century, the preferred foot is the iamb-i.e., an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, represented ...
pentarchy: in early Byzantine Christianity, the proposed government of universal Christendom by five patriarchal sees under the auspices of a single universal empire. Formulated in the legislation of the emperor Justinian I (527-565), especially in his Novella 131, the theory received ...
pentastomid: any of about 70 species of tiny parasites belonging to the Pentastomida, usually considered a class. Pentastomids are considered to lie between annelids and arthropods in evolutionary development. They range from a few millimetres to 14 cm (about 6 inches) ...
Pentateuch: the first five books of the Old Testament. See Torah.
pentathlon: athletic contest entailing five distinct types of competition. In the ancient Greek Olympics, the pentathlon included a race the length of the stadium (about 183 m [200 yd]), the long jump, the discus throw, the javelin throw, and a wrestling ...
pentatonic scale: musical scale containing five different tones. It is thought that the pentatonic scale represents an early stage of musical development, because it is found, in different forms, in most of the world's music. The most widely known form is anhemitonic ...
Pentecost: major festival in the Christian church, celebrated on the Sunday that falls on the 50th day after Easter. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, which occurred on the Jewish Pentecost, after the death, Resurrection, and ...
Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc.: Protestant denomination organized in the United States in 1916 after many members withdrew from the Assemblies of God during the Jesus Only controversy, a movement that denied the standard Pentecostal belief in the Trinity-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Originally an ...
Pentecostal Church of God of America, Inc.: Protestant denomination organized in Chicago in 1919 as the Pentecostal Assemblies of the U.S.A. by a group of ministers who had earlier refused affiliation in the General Council of the Assemblies of God (1914); the present name was adopted in ...
Pentecostal Fellowship of North America: cooperative organization established in Chicago in 1948 by eight Pentecostal denominations for the purpose of "interdenominational Pentecostal cooperation and fellowship." Several Canadian and U.S. Pentecostal bodies are members of the organization. It is governed by a 13-member Board of Administration ...
Pentecostal Holiness Church, Inc.: Protestant denomination organized in Falcon, N.C., in 1911 by the merger of the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church (organized in 1898 by several Pentecostal associations) and the Pentecostal Holiness Church (organized in 1900). A third group, the Tabernacle Pentecostal Church, joined the ...
Pentecostalism: charismatic religious movement that gave rise to a number of Protestant churches in the United States in the 20th century and that is unique in its belief that all Christians should seek a postconversion religious experience called baptism with the ...
Pentecote: island of Vanuatu, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, 60 miles (100 km) southeast of Espiritu Santo island. Volcanic in origin, it occupies 169 square miles (438 square km) and has a central mountain ridge that rises to 3,107 feet (947 ...
Pentelicus, Mount: mountain range enclosing the Attic plain on its northeast but within the nomos (department) of Attiki, in Greece. The chief summit, about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Athens, is Kokkinaras (3,632 feet [1,107 m]), which yields white Pentelic marble ...
Penthorum: genus of perennial herbs native to East Asia and eastern North America. All three species in the genus have underground stems, toothed leaves, and one-sided flower clusters borne at the branch tips. The ditch, or Virginian, stonecrop (P. sedoides) grows ...
penthouse: enclosed area on top of a building. Such a structure may house the top of an elevator shaft, air-conditioning equipment, or the stairs leading to the roof; it can also provide living or working accommodations. Usually a penthouse is set ...
Penticton: city, southern British Columbia, Canada. It lies between Skaha and Okanagan lakes, 245 miles (394 km) east of Vancouver. The site was first settled in 1865, its name being derived from a Salish Indian word, phthauntauc (pen-hik-ton), meaning "place to ...
pentimento: (from Italian pentirsi: "to repent"), in art, the reappearance in an oil painting of original elements of drawing or painting that the artist tried to obliterate by overpainting. If the covering pigment becomes transparent, as may happen over the years, ...
pentlandite: a nickel and iron sulfide mineral, the chief source of nickel. It is nearly always found with pyrrhotite and similar minerals in silica-poor rocks such as those at Bushveld, S.Af.; Bodo, Nor.; and Sudbury, Ont., Can. It has also been ...
pentode: vacuum-type electron tube with five electrodes. Besides the cathode filament, anode plate, and control grid of the triode and the added screen grid of the tetrode, there is still another grid (suppressor grid) placed between the screen grid and the ...
pentosuria: inborn error of carbohydrate metabolism, characterized by the excessive urinary excretion of the sugar xylitol. It is caused by a defect in the enzyme xylitol dehydrogenase, by which xylitol is normally metabolized. No disabilities are incurred, and no dietary or ...
Pentremites: extinct genus of stemmed, immobile echinoderms (forms related to the starfish) abundant as marine fossils in rocks of the Carboniferous Period (from 360 to 286 million years ago), especially those in the midcontinent region of North America. The genus is ...
penumbra: (from Latin paene, "almost"; umbra, "shadow"), in astronomy, the outer part of a conical shadow, cast by a celestial body, where the light from the Sun is partially blocked-as compared to the umbra (q.v.), the shadow's darkest, central part, where ...
Penutian languages: major grouping (phylum or superstock) of American Indian languages, spoken along the west coast of North America from British Columbia to central California and central New Mexico. The phylum consists of 15 language families with about 20 languages; the families ...
Penwith: district, administrative and historic county of Cornwall, extreme southwestern England. It is a promontory, including the Land's End peninsula at the westernmost tip of the island of Great Britain, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the English ...
Penza: oblast (province), western Russia, occupying an area of 16,680 square miles (43,200 square km) across the western flank of the Volga Upland, which falls gently to the Oka-Don Plain in the extreme west. The oblast lies in the zone of ...
Penza: city and administrative centre of Penza oblast (province), western Russia, at the confluence of the Penza and Sura rivers. The city was founded in 1666 as a major fortress; after 1684 it formed the western end of the Syzran defensive ...
Penzance: town ("parish"), Penwith district, administrative and historic county of Cornwall, England. It overlooks Mounts Bay, where the English Channel meets the Atlantic Ocean. The remarkably equable climate allows many subtropical plants to flourish. Early vegetables and flowers are raised locally ...
Penzias, Arno: German-American astrophysicist who shared one-half of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics with Robert Woodrow Wilson for their discovery of a faint electromagnetic radiation throughout the universe. Their detection of this radiation lent strong support to the big-bang model of ...
peonage: form of involuntary servitude, the origins of which have been traced as far back as the Spanish conquest of Mexico, when the conquerors were able to force the poor, especially the Indians, to work for Spanish planters and mine operators. ...
peony: any of the flowering plants in the genus Paeonia (family Paeoniaceae) known for their large, showy blossoms. All but two species are native to Europe and Asia; P. browni and P. californica are found along the Pacific coastal mountains of ...
People's Democratic Party: Nigerian political party.
Peoples Temple: religious community led by James Warren ("Jim") Jones (1931-78) that came to international attention after some 900 of its members died at their compound, Jonestown, in Guyana, in a massive act of murder-suicide on November 18, 1978.
Peoria: city, seat (1825) of Peoria county, central Illinois, U.S. Peoria lies along the Illinois River where it widens to form Peoria Lake, about 160 miles (260 km) southwest of Chicago. With Peoria Heights, West Peoria, Bartonville, Bellevue, East Peoria, Creve ...
Pepe, Guglielmo: Neapolitan soldier prominent in the Italian Risorgimento and author of valuable eyewitness accounts.
Pepel: town, Atlantic seaport, western Sierra Leone, on Pepel Island, near the mouth of the Sierra Leone River (an estuary formed by the Rokel River and Port Loko Creek). Beginning in 1933 it exported iron ore brought by rail from the ...
peperite: subsurface rock containing fragments ejected by an underground volcanic explosion (see tuff).
Peperomia: genus of the pepper family (Piperaceae), comprising more than 500 species of tropical and subtropical fleshy herbs, annuals as well as perennials. Some are epiphytic (growing on the branches of trees). The leaves, sometimes attractively coloured with veins or spots, ...
Pepi I: third king of the 6th dynasty (c. 2325-c. 2150 BC) of ancient Egypt, whose reign saw the spread of trade and conquest and a growth in the influence of powerful provincials from Upper Egypt.