Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Verbena ... vermouth

Verbena: genus of plants in the family Verbenaceae that contains several species of garden flowers. Verbena consists of about 250 species, almost all of them native to the tropical and subtropical Americas, including 20 in the United States. Two species are ...
Verbenaceae: the verbena, or vervain, family of plants in the order Lamiales, a worldwide but mainly tropical grouping of about 100 genera and more than 2,600 species, some of which are important for their flowers. Members of the family have opposite ...
Verbiest, Ferdinand: Dutch Jesuit missionary and astronomer who became an influential official in the Chinese government.
Vercelli: city, capital of Vercelli provincia, Piemonte (Piedmont) regione, northwestern Italy. It lies along the Sesia River, southwest of Novara. The chief city of the Libici (a Ligurian tribe), it later became a Roman
Vercelli Book: Old English manuscript written in the late 10th century. It contains texts of the poem Andreas, two poems by Cynewulf, The Dream of the Rood, an "Address of the Saved Soul to the Body," and a fragment of a homiletic ...
Vercingetorix: chieftain of the Gallic tribe of the Arverni whose formidable rebellion against Roman rule was crushed by Julius Caesar.
Vercors: French novelist and artist-engraver, who wrote Le Silence de la mer (1941; The Silence of the Sea), a patriotic tale of self-deception and of the triumph of passive resistance over evil. The novella was published clandestinely in Nazi-occupied Paris and ...
Verde, Cape: promontory along the coast of Senegal that is the westernmost part of continental Africa. It is shaped like a triangle (about 9 miles [15 km] per side), with the base of the triangle roughly along the north and its apex ...
Verde, Cesario: poet who revived Portuguese poetry by introducing colloquial language and by exploring its capacity for expression at a time when exalted rhetoric was the accepted style. He dealt extensively with themes pertaining to the growth of urban life.
Verdi, Giuseppe: leading Italian composer of opera in the 19th century, noted for operas such as Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), La traviata (1853), Don Carlos (1867),
Verdigris River: river rising southwest of Emporia, Kan., U.S., and flowing south and southeast past Neodesha, Independence, and Coffeyville and into Oklahoma to join the Arkansas River 5 miles (8 km) northeast of Muskogee, after a course of 350 miles (560 km). ...
verdin: North American songbird of the family Remizidae (q.v.).
Verdon River: river, southern France. It is famous for its gorges, including its "Grand Canyon," which may be seen from the scenic road that runs 12 miles (20 km) between Pont de l'Artuby and Aiguines, on the border of the Alpes-de-Haute Provence ...
Verdun: city, Montreal region, southern Quebec province, Canada. It lies on the Ile de Montreal (Montreal Island), overlooking the St. Lawrence River. Granted in 1672 to Zacharie Dupuis, a French military pioneer, it was named after his birthplace of Saverdun, France. ...
Verdun: town, Meuse departement, Lorraine region, northeastern France, on the Meuse River. Most of the town is on the left bank, near the Citadel. Practically destroyed in World War I, it was rebuilt with wide ...
Verdun, Battle of: (Feb. 21-July, 1916), one of the most devastating engagements of World War I, in which the French repulsed a major German offensive.
Verdun, Treaty of: (August 843), treaty partitioning the Carolingian empire among the three surviving sons of the emperor Louis I the Pious. The treaty was the first stage in the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne and foreshadowed the formation of the modern ...
verdure tapestry: type of tapestry decorated with a design based on plant forms. It is not known exactly when the first verdure tapestries were made, but, by the 16th century, tapestries with formal designs derived from foliage had become immensely popular. In ...
Verdy, Violette: French ballerina and dance director, who was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in 1973 and the Dance Magazine Award in 1968.
Vere Family: noted English family that held the hereditary office of lord great chamberlain from 1133 to 1779 and the earldom of Oxford from 1142 to 1703.
Vereeniging: town, Gauteng province, South Africa. It lies along the Vaal River, south of Johannesburg, at the Free State border. Its name, which is an Afrikaans word meaning "association," refers to the coal-mining association that owned the town when it was ...
Vereeniging, Peace of: (May 31, 1902), treaty that ended the South African War (q.v.), or Boer War; it was signed in Pretoria, after initial Boer approval in Vereeniging, between representatives of the British and ex-republican Boer governments. It ended the independence of the ...
Vereshchagin, Vasily Vasilyevich: Russian painter noted for his war scenes.
Verethraghna: in Zoroastrianism, the spirit of victory. Together with Mithra, the god of truth, Verethraghna shares martial characteristics that relate him to the Vedic war-god Indra. In Zoroastrian texts, Verethraghna appears as an agent of Mithra and Rashnu, the god of ...
Verga, Giovanni: novelist, short-story writer, and playwright, most important of the Italian verismo (Realist) school of novelists (see verismo). His reputation was slow to develop, but modern critics have assessed him as one of the greatest of all Italian novelists. His influence ...
Vergennes, Charles Gravier, comte de: French foreign minister who fashioned the alliance with the North American colonists that helped them throw off British rule in the American Revolution; at the same time, he worked, with considerable success, to establish a stable balance of power in ...
Vergerio, Pietro Paolo: Italian educator whose treatises on humanistic education greatly influenced educational methods and curriculum in Renaissance Italy.
Vergerio, Pietro Paulo: Italian reformer and most famous of "Old Catholic" bishops in the 16th century who accepted the principles of the Reformation while retaining a historic Roman Catholic episcopate and not withdrawing from the Church.
Verghina: archaeological site and ancient capital of Macedonia in Imathia nomos (department), northern Greece. It is situated on a plateau 47 miles (75 km) southwest of Thessaloniki, at the eastern foot of the Vermion Mountains, on the southern edge of the ...
Vergil, Polydore: Italian-born Humanist who wrote an English history that became required reading in schools and influenced the 16th-century English chroniclers Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed and, through them, Shakespeare.
Verginius Rufus, Lucius: Roman governor of Germania Superior who, in May 68, put down a rebellion against Nero led by the Gallic governor Vindex. When Galba, the governor of Nearer Spain, succeeded Nero as emperor after Nero committed suicide in June, Verginius, favoured ...
Vergniaud, Pierre-Victurnien: eloquent spokesman for the moderate Girondin faction during the French Revolution.
Verhaeren, Emile: foremost among the Belgian poets who wrote in French. The vigour of his work and the breadth of his vision have been compared to those of Victor Hugo and Walt Whitman.
verifiability principle: a philosophical doctrine fundamental to the school of Logical Positivism holding that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable or else tautological (i.e., such that its truth arises entirely from the meanings of its terms). Thus, ...
verisimilitude: the semblance of reality in dramatic or nondramatic fiction. The concept implies that either the action represented must be acceptable or convincing according to the audience's own experience or knowledge or, as in the presentation of science fiction or tales ...
verismo: (Italian: "realism"), literary realism as it developed in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its primary exponents were the Sicilian novelists Luigi Capuana and Giovanni Verga. The realist movement arose in Europe after the French Revolution and ...
verismo: (Italian: "realism"), a style of Italian opera writing that flourished in the last decade of the 19th century. It was marked by melodramatic, often violent plots with characters drawn from everyday life. Musical devices included passionate declamation by solo voices ...
Verissimo, Erico Lopes: novelist, literary historian, and critic whose writings in Portuguese and in English on Brazilian literature introduced readers throughout the world both to the literary currents of modern Brazil and to his country's social order and cultural heritage.
Verkhoyansk: town, Sakha (Yakutiya), far northeastern Russia, on the Yana River near its confluence with the Sartang. Founded as a fort in 1638 and today a minor centre of tin and gold mining, Verkhoyansk is noted chiefly for its exceptionally low ...
Verkhoyansk Mountains: mountains of Sakha (Yakutiya), far northeastern Russia, extending for 700 miles (1,100 km)-in a huge arc parallel to and east of the lower Lena River-to the Laptev Sea. The range represents a major anticlinal structure, created in a period of ...
Verlaine, Paul: French lyric poet first associated with the Parnassians and later known as a leader of the Symbolists. With Stephane Mallarme and Charles Baudelaire he formed the so-called Decadents.
Vermeer, Johannes: Dutch artist who created paintings that are among the most beloved and revered images in the history of art. Although only about 36 of his paintings survive, these rare works are among the greatest treasures in the world's finest museums. ...
vermeil: gilded silver produced either by the fire-gilding method or by electrolysis. In the former, earlier method the object is covered with an amalgam of gold and mercury; the mercury evaporates when the piece is fired, leaving a gold deposit. In ...
vermiculated work: in masonry, the carving or finishing of building stones with irregular grooves intended to resemble worm tracks. Vermiculation is one form of surface rustication, the intention of which is to create a decorative contrast between the rusticated work, ordinarily confined ...
vermiculite: clay mineral similar to montmorillonite in structure and, in some cases, composition. Vermiculite is typically formed by the alteration of biotite, and it occurs both as large pseudomorphs replacing biotite and as small particles in soils and ancient sediments. It ...
Vermigli, Peter Martyr: leading Italian religious Reformer whose chief concern was eucharistic doctrine.
Vermillion: city, seat (1862) of Clay county, southeastern South Dakota, U.S. It lies near the confluence of the Vermillion and Missouri rivers, just north of the Nebraska border and about 15 miles (25 km) west of the Iowa border. Fort Vermillion, ...
Vermion Mountains: mountain range, Imathia nomos (department), west-central Macedonia, Greece. The range rises west of the broad plain of Kambania, which extends southward to the Gulf of Salonika. The mountains reach a height of 6,732 feet (2,052 m) west of Naousa. The ...
Vermont: constituent state of the United States of America. One of the six New England states lying in the northeastern corner of the nation, it was admitted to the Union on March 4, 1791, as the 14th state. Its 9,614 square ...
Vermont, University of: public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Burlington, Vt., U.S. It is a land-grant university composed of the Graduate College and colleges of agricultural and life sciences, arts and sciences, education and social services, engineering and mathematics, and medicine, as ...
vermouth: wine-based fortified drink flavoured with aromatic herbs. The name derives from the German Vermut, or "wormwood" (see ), a bitter herb and traditional ingredient of vermouth and absinthe. As many as 40 different herbs and flavourings may be used in ...