Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Witbank ... Woiwode, Larry

Witbank: town, Mpumalanga province, South Africa, east of Pretoria. Established in 1890, it is at the centre of a coal-mining area in which more than 20 collieries operate. During the South African War, the young soldier-journalist Winston Churchill hid in a ...
witch ball: a hollow glass sphere, sometimes as large as 7 inches (18 cm) in diameter. Witch balls are made in several colours, among which green and blue predominate. Its name is possibly a corruption of the 18th-century term watch ball.
witch doctor: a healer or benevolent worker of magic in a nonliterate society. The term originated in England in the 18th century and is generally considered to be pejorative and anthropologically inaccurate. See also medicine man; shaman.
witch hazel: any of six species of the genus Hamamelis (family Hamamelidaceae), all of which are shrubs and small trees that are native to eastern North America and eastern Asia. Some are grown for their yellow flowers, with four narrow, twisted ribbonlike ...
witchcraft: the exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Although defined differently in disparate historical and cultural contexts, witchcraft has often been seen, especially in the West, as the work ...
witches' sabbath: nocturnal gathering of witches, a colourful and intriguing part of the lore surrounding them in Christian European tradition. The concept dates from the mid-14th century when it first appeared in Inquisition records, although revels and feasts mentioned by such classical ...
witches'-broom: symptom of plant disease that occurs as an abnormal brushlike cluster of dwarfed, weak shoots arising at or near the same point; twigs and branches of woody plants may die back. There are numerous causes, including rust (Gymnosporangium and Pucciniastrum); ...
witchweed: any plant of the genus Striga in the figwort family (Scrophulariaceae), including about 50 species of the Old World tropics and one species introduced into the southeastern United States. About 10 species are destructive as parasites on such crops as ...
Wither, George: English poet and Puritan pamphleteer, best remembered for a few songs and hymns.
witherite: a carbonate mineral, barium carbonate (BaCO₃), that is, with the exception of barite, the most common barium mineral, despite its rarity. It is ordinarily found in fairly pure form in association with barite and galena in low-temperature hydrothermal veins, as ...
Witherspoon, John: Scottish-American Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University); he was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Witigis: Ostrogoth soldier who became king of Italy and led his people in an unsuccessful last-ditch struggle against the Eastern Roman Empire.
Witkiewicz, Stanislaw Ignacy: Polish painter, novelist, and playwright, well known as a dramatist in the period between the two world wars.
Witos, Wincenty: Polish statesman and leader of the Peasant Party, who was three times prime minister of Poland (1920-21, 1923, 1926).
Witoto: South American Indians of southeastern Colombia and northern Peru, belonging to an isolated language group. There were more than 31 Witotoan tribes in an aboriginal population of several thousand. Exploitation, disease, and assimilation had reduced the Witoto to fewer than ...
Witt, Johan de: one of the foremost European statesmen of the 17th century who as councillor pensionary (the political leader) of Holland (1653-72) guided the United Provinces in the First and Second Anglo-Dutch wars (1652-54, 1665-67) and consolidated the nation's naval and commercial ...
Witt, Katarina: German figure skater who was the first woman to win consecutive Olympic gold medals (1984 and 1988) in singles figure skating since Sonja Henie in 1936. The charismatic Witt defined the sport in the 1980s with her flirtatious and graceful ...
Witte, Emanuel de: Dutch painter whose scenes of church interiors represent the last phase of architectural painting in the Netherlands.
Witte, Sergey Yulyevich, Graf: (Count) Russian minister of finance (1892-1903) and first constitutional prime minister of the Russian Empire (1905-06), who sought to wed firm authoritarian rule to modernization along Western lines.
Witteberg series: uppermost member of the Cape System of sedimentary rocks in South Africa. It consists of about 805 metres (2,640 feet) of shales and sandstones and is transitional between the Late Devonian epoch and the Early Carboniferous epoch (the Carboniferous began ...
Wittelsbach, House of: German noble family that provided rulers of Bavaria and of the Rhenish Palatinate until the 20th century. The name was taken from the castle of Wittelsbach, which formerly stood near Aichach on the Paar in Bavaria. In 1124, Otto V, ...
Witten: city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), northwestern Germany. It lies on the Ruhr River, bordering Dortmund (north) and Bochum (northwest). Chartered in 1825, it was severely damaged in World War II but was rebuilt along modern lines with ...
Witten, Edward: American mathematical physicist who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990 for his work in superstring theory. He also received the Dirac Medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (1985). See the table of ...
Wittenberg: city, Saxony-Anhalt Land (state), north-central Germany. It lies on the Elbe River, southwest of Berlin. First mentioned in 1180 and chartered in 1293, it was the residence of the Ascanian dukes and electors of Saxony from 1212 ...
Wittenmyer, Annie Turner: American relief worker and reformer who helped supply medical aid and dietary assistance to army hospitals during the Civil War and was subsequently an influential organizer in the temperance movement.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Austrian-born English philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Wittgenstein's two major works, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922) and Philosophische Untersuchungen (published posthumously in 1953; Philosophical Investigations), have inspired a vast secondary literature and ...
Wittig, Georg: German chemist whose studies of organic phosphorus compounds won him a share (with Herbert C. Brown) of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1979.
Wittig, Monique: French avant-garde novelist and radical feminist whose works include unconventional narratives about utopian nonhierarchical worlds, often devoid of men.
Wittlin, Jozef: Polish novelist, essayist, and poet, an Expressionist noted for his humanist views.
Wittstock, Battle of: (Oct. 4, 1636), military engagement of the Thirty Years' War, the greatest victory of the Swedish general Johan Baner, pupil of Gustavus II Adolphus. The battle took place at a time when the Swedish army in Germany desperately needed a ...
Witu Islands: volcanic island group of the Bismarck Archipelago, eastern Papua New Guinea. The islands lie 40 miles (65 km) north of New Britain Island in the Bismarck Sea, southwestern Pacific. The group, with a total land area of 45 square miles ...
Witwatersrand: ridge of gold-bearing rock mostly in Gauteng province, South Africa. Its name means "Ridge of White Waters." The highland, which forms the watershed between the Vaal and Limpopo rivers, is about 62 miles (100 km) long and 23 miles (37 ...
Witwatersrand System: major division of Precambrian rocks in South Africa (the Precambrian began about 3.8 billion years ago and ended 540 million years ago). The Witwatersrand rocks overlie rocks of the Dominion Reef System, underlie those of the Ventersdorp System, and occur ...
Witz, Konrad: late Gothic Swiss painter who was one of the first European artists to incorporate realistic landscapes into religious paintings.
Wivallius, Lars: Swedish poet and adventurer, whose lyrics show a feeling for the beauties of nature new to Swedish poetry in his time.
Wiyot: southernmost of the Indians of the North Pacific Coast of North America. They lived along the lower Mad River, Humboldt Bay, and lower Eel River of California and spoke Wiyot, a Macro-Algonquian language. They were culturally and linguistically related to ...
wizard: one who practices magic (see magician) or sorcery (q.v.).
Wladyslaw I: king of Poland (1320-33), a ruler who succeeded in bringing together a series of Polish principalities into a kingdom and laying the foundations for a strong Polish nation.
Wladyslaw II Jagiello: Lithuanian Jogaila, or Iogaila, English Jagiello, or Jagello grand duke of Lithuania (as Jogaila, 1377-1401) and king of Poland (1386-1434), who joined two states that became the leading power of eastern Europe. He was the founder of Poland's Jagiellon dynasty ...
Wladyslaw III Warnenczyk: Polish king (1434-44) who was also king of Hungary (as Ulaszlo I; 1440-44) and who attempted unsuccessfully to push the Ottoman Turks out of the Balkans. His reign was overshadowed by the presence of his adviser, Zbigniew Olesnicki.
Wladyslaw IV Vasa: king of Poland (1632-48), a popular monarch who did much to heal the wounds and solve the problems created by his father, Sigismund III Vasa, an obstinate man and religious bigot who created internal friction in Poland and pursued a ...
Wloclawek: city, Kujawsko-Pomorskie wojewodztwo (province), north-central Poland, on the Vistula River.
woad: (Isatis tinctoria), biennial or perennial herb, of the mustard family (Brassicaceae), formerly grown as a source of the blue dye indigo and now sometimes cultivated for its clusters of small, four-petalled yellow flowers. It is a summer-flowering native of Eurasia, ...
Woburn: city, Middlesex county, northeastern Massachusetts, U.S., located just north of Boston. The community, named for Woburn, England, was set off from Charlestown and incorporated as a town in 1642. Aided by construction of the Middlesex Canal (1803), it changed its ...
Woburn Abbey: Bedfordshire, Eng., seat of the dukes of Bedford, with a house that was rebuilt from a medieval Cistercian abbey by Henry Flitcroft (in 1747-61) and Henry Holland (in 1787-88). Its approximately 3,000-acre (1,000-hectare) park is the home of a magnificent ...
Wodehouse, Sir P.G.: English-born comic novelist, short-story writer, lyricist, and playwright, best known as the creator of Jeeves, the supreme "gentleman's gentleman." He wrote more than 90 books and more than 20 film scripts and collaborated on more than 30 plays and musical ...
Wodzislaw Slaski: city, Slaskie wojewodztwo (province), south-central Poland. Located in the Rybnik coal fields, it is 6 miles (10 km) north of the border with the Czech Republic and 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Katowice, the provincial capital.
Woestijne, Karel van de: Flemish poet whose body of work constitutes a symbolic autobiography.
Woffington, Peg: Irish actress, one of the outstanding theatrical personalities of her time.
Wohler, Friedrich: German chemist, first to synthesize (1828) an organic compound (urea) from an inorganic substance. About the same time, he developed a process for preparing metallic aluminum.
Woiwode, Larry: American writer whose semiautobiographical fiction reflects his early childhood in a tiny town on the western North Dakota plains, where five generations of his family had lived.