Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Welsh terrier ... Wertheimer, Max

Welsh terrier: breed of terrier native to Wales, where it has been used as a hunter of foxes, otters, and badgers. The Welsh terrier is a small, Airedale-like dog with a characteristically game and energetic nature. It has a hard, wiry coat, ...
Welshpool: town, Powys county, historic county of Montgomeryshire, Wales, in the valley of the River Severn. Its charter, granting market rights, dates from 1263. Lying near the English border, the town showed pro-English sympathies in the Middle Ages and has traditionally ...
Welt, Die: (German: "The World"), daily newspaper, one of the most influential in Germany and the only one of national scope and stature published in Bonn during that city's time as West German capital.
Welti, Emil: statesman, six times president of the Swiss Confederation, and a champion of federal centralization.
Weltschmerz: (German: "world grief"), the prevailing mood of melancholy and pessimism associated with the poets of the Romantic era that arose from their refusal or inability to adjust to those realities of the world that they saw as destructive of their ...
Welty, Eudora: American short-story writer and novelist whose work is mainly focused with great precision on the regional manners of people inhabiting a small Mississippi town that resembles her own birthplace and the Delta country.
Welwitschiaceae: a family of southwestern African desert plants in the order Gnetales, named for its single genus, Welwitschia. Tumboa plants (W. mirabilis or W. bainesii), constituting the only species, have deep taproots and resemble giant radishes, 60 to 120 cm (about ...
Welwyn Garden City: new town in Welwyn Hatfield district, administrative and historic county of Hertfordshire, England, on the northern periphery of London. It was founded in 1920 by Sir Ebenezer Howard as a planned town to provide for both industry and pleasant living ...
Welwyn Hatfield: district, administrative and historic county of Hertfordshire, southeastern England, directly north of the metropolitan county of Greater London. Welwyn Hatfield district is an area of rolling, open countryside within the Thames basin, and its southern sections are part of the ...
Wen Jiabao: Chinese official, premier of China from 2003.
Wen Ti: the Chinese god of literature, whose chief heavenly task, assigned by the Jade Emperor (Yu Huang), is to keep a log of men of letters so that he can mete out rewards and punishments to each according to his merit. ...
Wen Tingyun: Chinese lyric poet of the late Tang dynasty who helped to establish a new style of versification associated with the ci form, which flourished in the subsequent Song dynasty (960-1279).
Wen Zhengming: Chinese painter, calligrapher, and scholarly figure who was a student of Shen Zhou; these two artists are considered the leading figures of the Wu school of scholar-artists in China.
Wen-chou: city and port in southeastern Chekiang sheng (province), China. Wen-chou is situated on the south bank of the Ou River, some 19 miles (30 km) from its mouth. The estuary of the Ou River is much obstructed by small islands ...
Wen-hsiang: official and statesman in the last years of the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911/12), who took a lead in promoting Western studies, reforming the Chinese government, and introducing Western technology into China.
Wen-ti: emperor (reigned 581-604) who reunified and reorganized China after 300 years of instability, founding the Sui dynasty. He conquered the several dynasties into which southern China had been divided, and he broke the power of the Mongols and Turks in ...
Wen-ti: fourth emperor (reigned 180/179-157/156 BC) of the Han dynasty of China. His reign was marked by good government and the peaceful consolidation of imperial power.
Wen-tsung: 14th emperor (reigned 826/827-840) of the T'ang dynasty (618-907) of China who attempted unsuccessfully to free the court from the influence of the palace eunuchs, who had usurped much of the imperial power. His carefully laid plots against the eunuchs ...
Wen-wang: father of Wu-wang, the founder of the Chou dynasty (c. 1111-255 BC) and one of the sage rulers regarded by Confucian historians as a model king.
Wenatchee: city, seat (1899) of Chelan county, central Washington, U.S., in the foothills of the Cascade Range, just below the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia rivers, opposite East Wenatchee; the name derives from the Yakima Indian wenachi, meaning "river flowing ...
Wenceslas: German king and, as Wenceslas IV, king of Bohemia, whose weak and tempestuous, though eventful, reign was continually plagued by wars and princely rivalries that he was unable to control, plunging his territories into a state of virtual anarchy until ...
Wenceslas I: king of Bohemia from 1230 who brought Austria under his dynasty while using the influence of German colonists and craftsmen to keep Bohemia strong, prosperous, and culturally progressive.
Wenceslas I: prince of Bohemia, martyr, and patron saint of Czechoslovakia.
Wenceslas II: king of Bohemia from 1278 and of Poland from 1300 who ably ruled his Bohemian kingdom and spread his influence not only into Poland but also into Hungary.
Wenceslas III: last king of the Premyslid dynasty of Bohemia, king of Hungary from 1301 to 1304, and claimant to the Polish throne; his brief reign in Bohemia was cut short by his assassination, which also prevented him from asserting his right ...
Wend: any member of a group of Slavic tribes that had settled in the area between the Oder River (on the east) and the Elbe and Saale rivers (on the west) by the 5th century AD, in what is now eastern ...
Wendat: among North American Indians, a confederacy of four Iroquoian-speaking bands of the Huron (q.v.) nation-the Rock, Bear, Cord, and Deer-together with a few smaller, dependent communities that joined them at different periods for protection against the Iroquois Confederacy. When first ...
Wenders, Wim: German film director who, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, was one of the principal members of the New German Cinema of the 1970s.
Wendt, Albert: Samoan novelist and poet who wrote about present-day Samoan life. Perhaps the best-known writer in the South Pacific, Wendt sought to counteract the frequently romanticized, often racist literature about Polynesians written by outsiders.
Wenlock Series: the second of four main divisions (in ascending order) in the Silurian System, representing all those rocks on a global basis deposited during the Wenlock Epoch (428-421 million years ago). Its name is derived from the type district at Wenlock ...
wenrenhua: ideal form of the Chinese scholar-painter who was more interested in personal erudition and expression than in literal representation or an immediately attractive surface beauty. First formulated in the Northern Song period (960-1127)-at which time it was called
Wenrohronon: Iroquoian-speaking Indians whose name means "People of the Place of the Floating Scum," probably after the oil spring at what is now Cuba, N.Y., U.S., where they lived. The oil was a highly regarded medicine for various ailments. Like other ...
Wensleydale: the upper valley (dale) of the River Ure in the Pennine highlands of Richmondshire district, administrative county of North Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, England. Famous for the cheese to which it gave its name, Wensleydale is a centre of ...
Went, F.A.F.C.: Dutch botanist who initiated the study of plant hormones and advanced the study of botany in The Netherlands.
wentletrap: any marine snail of the family Epitoniidae (subclass Prosobranchia of the class Gastropoda), in which the turreted shell-consisting of whorls that form a high, conical spiral-has deeply ribbed sculpturing. Most species are white, less than 5 cm (2 inches) long, ...
Wentworth, Cecile de: American painter who established a reputation in Europe for her portraits of important personages.
Wentworth, W.C.: the leading Australian political figure during the first half of the 19th century, whose lifelong work for self-government culminated in the New South Wales constitution of 1855.
Wenzel, Hanni: Liechtenstein Alpine skier who was the first athlete from her country to win an Olympic medal, earning a bronze at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria. She went on to win two gold medals and a silver at the ...
Weores, Sandor: Hungarian poet who wrote imaginative lyrical verse that encompassed a wide range of techniques and metric forms.
Werboczi, Istvan: statesman and jurist, whose codification of Hungarian law served as his country's basic legal text for more than 400 years.
werewolf: in European folklore, a man who turns into a wolf at night and devours animals, people, or corpses but returns to human form by day. Some werewolves change shape at will; others, in whom the condition is hereditary or acquired ...
Werfel, Franz: German-language writer who attained prominence as an Expressionist poet, playwright, and novelist. As a consequence of his experiences with Nazism, he espoused human brotherhood, heroism, and religious faith.
Wergeland, Henrik Arnold: Norway's great national poet, symbol of Norway's independence, whose humanitarian activity, revolutionary ideas, and love of freedom made him a legendary figure. The clash between his faction (the "patriots") and the pro-Danish "intelligentsia" led by Johan Welhaven (q.v.) marked the ...
wergild: (Old English: "man payment"), in ancient Germanic law, the amount of compensation paid by a person committing an offense to the injured party or, in case of death, to his family. In certain instances part of the wergild was paid ...
Werner, Abraham Gottlob: German geologist who founded the Neptunist school, which proclaimed the aqueous origin of all rocks, in opposition to the Plutonists, or Vulcanists, who argued that granite and many other rocks were of igneous origin. Werner rejected uniformitarianism (belief that geological ...
Werner, Alfred: Swiss chemist and recipient of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his research into the structure of coordination compounds.
wernerite: variety of the feldspathoid mineral scapolite (q.v.).
Wernicke, Carl: German neurologist who related nerve diseases to specific areas of the brain. He is best known for his descriptions of the aphasias, disorders interfering with the ability to communicate in speech or writing.
Wernigerode: city, Saxony-Anhalt Land (state), central Germany. It lies at the confluence of the Holtemme and Zillierbach rivers, north of the Harz Mountains and southwest of Magdeburg. First mentioned in 1121 and chartered in 1229, it joined the ...
Werribee: town and shire in southern Victoria, Australia, situated on the Werribee River about 19 mi (29 km) southwest by rail from Melbourne and nearly 5 mi from the coast of Port Phillip Bay. Three major government facilities are located at ...
Wertheimer, Max: Czech-born psychologist, one of the founders, with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler, of Gestalt psychology (q.v.), which attempts to examine psychological phenomena as structural wholes, rather than breaking them down into components.