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Rhodes scholarship ... Rialto Bridge

Rhodes scholarship: educational grant to the University of Oxford, established in 1902 by the will of Cecil Rhodes for the purpose of promoting unity among English-speaking nations. The scholarships are for two years, with a third year at the discretion of the ...
Rhodes, Alexandre de: Jesuit missionary who was the first Frenchman to visit Vietnam.
Rhodes, Cecil: financier, statesman, and empire builder of British South Africa. He was prime minister of Cape Colony (1890-96) and organizer of the giant diamond-mining company De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. (1888). By his will he established the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford ...
Rhodes, Colossus of: colossal statue of the sun god Helios that stood in the ancient Greek city of Rhodes and was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The sculptor Chares of Lyndus (another city on the island) created the statue, which ...
Rhodes, James Ford: American businessman and historian, best known for his multivolume investigation of the antebellum, American Civil War, and Reconstruction periods of the United States' history.
Rhodes, Lawrence: American premier dancer and ballet director.
Rhodes, Wilfred: English cricketer who during his career (1898-1930) completed more doubles (1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a single season) than any other player. He appeared in 58 Test (international) matches and played in his last Test competition at the age ...
Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Federation of: political unit created in 1953 and ended on Dec. 31, 1963, that embraced the British settler-dominated colony of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and the territories of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi), which were under the control of the British Colonial ...
Rhodesian ridgeback: South African hound dog breed characterized by a narrow band of hair that grows forward along its back, against the direction of the rest of the coat. This ridge is inherited from a half-wild native hunting dog that, by breeding ...
Rhodian Sea Law: body of regulations governing commercial trade and navigation in the Byzantine Empire beginning in the 7th century; it influenced the maritime law of the medieval Italian cities.
rhodium: (Rh), chemical element, one of the platinum metals of Group VIII of the periodic table, predominantly used as an alloying agent to harden platinum. Rhodium is a precious, silver-white metal, with a high reflectivity for light. It is not corroded ...
rhodochrosite: (Greek: Rose Coloured), mineral composed of manganese carbonate (MnCO₃) that is a source of manganese for the ferromanganese alloys used in steel production. It is commonly found in ore veins formed at moderate temperatures, in high-temperature metamorphic deposits, and in ...
rhododendron: (Rhododendron), any of a genus of woody plants in the heath family (Ericaceae), notable for their attractive flowers and handsome foliage. The genus is large and extremely diverse, comprising about 800 species. They are native chiefly in the North Temperate ...
rhodolite: pink or rose-red variety of pyrope (q.v.), a garnet mineral.
rhodonite: silicate mineral that occurs as rounded crystals, masses, or grains in various manganese ores, often with rhodochrosite. It is found in the Ural Mountains of Russia, where it is mined for ornamental uses, and in Sweden, New South Wales, California, ...
Rhodope Mountains: mountain system in the Balkan Peninsula. The Rhodope Mountains lie mainly in Bulgaria, but also reach into Greece. The least accessible region in the Balkans, the system within Bulgaria has an area of 5,690 sq mi (14,737 sq km), extending ...
Rhodophyta: division or phylum of algae the members of which are commonly known as red algae (q.v.).
rhodopsin: a chromoprotein (protein linked to a pigment-carrying substance) that is contained in the light-sensitive cells of the rod type in the retina of the eye; it functions in the eye's adaptation to dim light. When the eye is exposed to ...
rhodora: (Rhododendron canadense), deciduous shrub, of the heath family (Ericaceae), native to northeastern North America. It occurs most commonly in swampy regions, grows to about 90 centimetres (3 feet) in height, and has alternate, oval or oblong, smooth-edged leaves about 3.75-5 ...
Rhondda: community, Rhondda Cynon Taff county borough, historic county of Glamorgan (Morgannwg), Wales. Rhondda comprises two almost continuous belts of settlement along the valleys of the Rivers Rhondda Fawr ("Great") and Rhondda Fach ("Small"). The whole area, isolated and thinly inhabited ...
Rhondda Cynon Taff: county borough in southern Wales. It encompasses the northwest-southeast-trending upper valleys of the Rivers Ely, Rhondda, Taff, and Cynon and the wooded hills between them. These hills increase in elevation to the north, where they form the foothills of the ...
Rhondda, David Alfred Thomas, 1st viscount, baron Rhondda of Llanwern: Welsh coal-mining entrepreneur, leading figure in industrial South Wales, and government official who introduced food rationing into Great Britain during World War I.
Rhone River: historic river of Switzerland and France and one of the most significant waterways of Europe. It is the only major river flowing directly to the Mediterranean Sea and is thoroughly Alpine in character. In this respect it differs markedly from ...
Rhone wine: any of numerous table wines, mostly red, from the Cotes du Rhone region of southeastern France. The vineyards are situated on either side of the Rhone River from south of Lyon to Avignon.
Rhone-Alpes: region of France encompassing the southeastern departements of Loire, Rhone, Ain, Haute-Savoie, Savoie, Isere, Drome, and Ardeche. Rhone-Alpes is bounded by the regions of Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur and Languedoc-Roussillon to the south, ...
Rhone-Poulenc SA: former French chemical manufacturer and leading producer of organic chemicals, synthetic fibres, and pharmaceuticals. It merged with Hoechst Aktiengesellschaft in 1999 to create the French-German pharmaceutical firm Aventis.
rhubarb: any of several species of the genus Rheum (family Polygonaceae), especially Rheum rhaponticum (or R. rhabarbarum), a hardy perennial grown for its large, succulent leafstalks, which are edible.
rhupunt: one of the 24 metres of the Welsh bardic tradition. A rhupunt is a verse composed of three, four, or five four-syllable sections linked by cynghanedd (an intricate system of accentuation, alliteration, and internal ...
Rhus: genus of about 150 species of shrubs, small trees, and vines, of the cashew family (Anacardiaceae), including the popular sumacs (see sumac). Authorities disagree over the inclusion of poison oak, poison sumac, and poison ivy (q.v.), which are often classified ...
Rhyl: seaside town, Denbighshire (Sir Ddinbych) county, historic county of Flintshire (Sir Fflint), Wales, at the mouth of the River Clwyd. The town is predominantly a holiday resort, with extensive sandy beaches and excellent rail and road links with Lancashire and ...
rhyme: the correspondence of two or more words with similar-sounding final syllables placed so as to echo one another. Rhyme is used by poets and occasionally by prose writers to produce sounds appealing to the reader's senses and to unify and ...
rhyme royal: seven-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc. The rhyme royal was first used in English verse in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde and The Parlement of Foules. Traditionally, the name rhyme royal is ...
rhyme scheme: the formal arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or a poem. If it is one of a number of set rhyme patterns, it may be identified by the name of the poet with whom the set rhyme is generally associated ...
rhyme-tag: a word or phrase used primarily to produce a rhyme. Rhyme-tags are used to comic effect in much light verse, as in W.S. Gilbert's "The Modern Major-Gineral," which reads in partI am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral,I've information ...
Rhynchocephalia: reptilian order that arose in the Triassic and Jurassic periods (225,000,000 to 136,000,000 years ago) and survives today as the tuatara (q.v.) of New Zealand.
rhynchophthirinan: any member of the suborder Rhynchophthirina of the louse order Phthiraptera, consisting of the genus Haematomyzus with two species. Although its origins and relationships are uncertain, the suborder is considered intermediate between the chewing lice and the sucking lice.
Rhynchotrema: extinct genus of brachiopods, or lamp shells, found as fossils in Middle and Late Ordovician rocks (the Ordovician Period lasted from 505 to 438 million years ago). The shell is small and distinctive for its strongly developed ribbing. Rhynchotrema is ...
Rhynchotreta: extinct genus of brachiopods (lamp shells) commonly found as fossils in Silurian marine rocks (between 438 and 408 million years old). Its small, roughly triangular shell is prominently ornamented by distinct ridges that run lengthwise to the shell margin. Because ...
Rhynie plants: several genera of fossil plants uncovered near Rhynie, Aberdeen, Scot., of significance in tracing the evolution of vascular plants (plants with special cells that conduct water and food). The rocks containing these fossils are of Devonian age (the Devonian Period ...
rhyolite: extrusive igneous rock that is the volcanic equivalent of granite. Most rhyolites are porphyritic, indicating that crystallization began prior to extrusion. Crystallization may sometimes have begun while the magma was deeply buried; in such cases, the rock may consist principally ...
Rhys, Ernest Percival: English man of letters who, as editor of Everyman's Library, a series of inexpensive editions of world classics, influenced the literary taste of his own and succeeding generations.
Rhys, Jean: West Indian novelist who earned acclaim for her early works set in the bohemian world of Europe in the 1920s and '30s but who stopped writing for nearly three decades, until she wrote a successful novel set in the West ...
Rhys, Sion Dafydd: Welsh physician and grammarian whose grammar, Cambrobrytannicae Cymraecaeve linguae institutiones et rudimenta (1592), was the foundation of all later Welsh grammatical studies.
rhythm: in poetry, the patterned recurrence, within a certain range of regularity, of specific language features, usually features of sound. Although difficult to define, rhythm is readily discriminated by the ear and the mind, having as it does a physiological basis. ...
rhythm: in music, the placement of sounds in time. In its most general sense rhythm (Greek rhythmos, derived from rhein, "to flow") is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements. The notion of rhythm also occurs in other arts (e.g., poetry, painting, ...
rhythm and blues: term used for several types of postwar African-American popular music, as well as for some white rock music derived from it. The term was coined by Jerry Wexler in 1947, when he was editing the charts at the trade journal ...
rhythmic gymnastics: the performance of systematic physical exercise with the aid of such hand apparatuses as ropes, hoops, balls, clubs, and ribbons. It is closely related to women's artistic gymnastics-a sport performed on the vaulting horse, uneven parallel bars, balance beam, and ...
rhythmic mode: rhythmic organization in triple patterns underlying all polyphonic (many-voiced) music of the late 12th and 13th centuries, beginning with the descant sections of two-part organa of the Notre-Dame school in Paris and culminating in the multilingual motets of the 13th ...
ria: funnel-shaped estuary that occurs at a river mouth and is formed by the submergence of the lower portion of the river valley. Generally occurring along a rugged coast perpendicular to a mountain chain, many rias were formed by the rise ...
rial: monetary unit of Iran, Oman, and Yemen.
Rialto Bridge: crossing over the narrowest point of the Grand Canal in the heart of Venice, built in the closing years of the 16th century, renowned as an architectural and engineering achievement of the Renaissance. It was designed and built following a ...