Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Youngstown State University ... Yukaghir language

Youngstown State University: public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Youngstown, Ohio, U.S. It comprises Williamson College of Business Administration, Rayen College of Engineering and Technology, and colleges of Arts and Sciences, Education, Fine and Performing Arts, and Health and Human Services. In ...
Yourcenar, Marguerite: novelist, essayist, and short-story writer who became the first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise (French Academy), an exclusive literary institution with a membership limited to 40.
youth hostel: supervised shelter providing inexpensive overnight lodging, particularly for young people. Hostels range from simple accommodations in a farm house to hotels able to house several hundred guests for days at a time. They are located in many parts of the ...
Yovkov, Yordan: Bulgarian short-story writer, novelist, and dramatist whose stories of Balkan peasant life and military experiences show a fine mastery of prose.
Yozgat: city, central Turkey. The city lies on the site of a Bronze Age settlement 100 miles (160 km) east of Ankara in a valley of the Ak Mountains, at an elevation of 4,360 feet (1,329 metres). The main road between ...
Ypacarai: city, southern Paraguay. It is situated in the westward extension of the Brazilian Highlands. Its name means "water of God" in the ancient Guarani language. Founded in 1887, it serves as a commercial and manufacturing centre for the agricultural and ...
Ypres: municipality, West Flanders province (province), western Belgium. It lies along the Yperlee (Ieperlee) River, south of Ostend. Ypres became a major cloth-weaving city in the Middle Ages, and together with Brugge and Ghent it virtually controlled Flanders ...
Ypsilanti: city, Washtenaw County, southeastern Michigan, U.S. It lies along the Huron River just east of Ann Arbor. Originally called Woodruff's Grove, it grew up around a French trading post (1809-19) and was renamed in 1833 for Demetrios Ypsilanti, a Greek ...
Yrjo-Koskinen, Sakari: historian and politician, author of the first history of Finland in Finnish. Later he guided the Old Finn Party in its policy of compliance with Russia's unconstitutional Russification program in Finland.
Ysaye, Eugene: Belgian violinist, conductor, and composer, the foremost interpreter of the string works of French and Belgian composers of his time.
Yser River: a small stream (48 mi [77 km] long), rising on the north flanks of the sandstone hills of Monts Cassell and de Recollets in northern France and flowing in an arc through West Flanders province, western Belgium, into the North ...
Ysleta: former town, now a southeastern section of El Paso, El Paso county, extreme western Texas, U.S. Ysleta lies near the Rio Grande. The town was annexed by El Paso in 1955, though residents of Ysleta had voted against the merger.
Ysopet: in French literature, a medieval collection of fables, often versions of Aesop's Fables. The word was first applied to a collection of tales written by Marie de France in the late 12th century; they were said to be based directly ...
ytterbium: (Yb), chemical element, rare-earth metal of transition Group IIIb of the periodic table, a low-melting-point, divalent rare earth with little commercial use.
yttrium: (Y), chemical element, rare-earth metal of transition Group IIIb of the periodic table, used for red phosphors in colour television. Yttrium metal is silvery in colour, ductile, and relatively reactive; turnings of the metal ignite readily in air.
Yu Ch'ien: defense minister who saved China when the Cheng-t'ung emperor (1427-64) of the Ming dynasty was captured in 1449 while leading Chinese troops against the Mongol leader Esen.
Yu Dafu: popular short-story writer of the 1920s in China, one of the founding members of the Creation Society, which was devoted to the promotion of modern literature.
Yu River: river in South China. A southern tributary of the Hsi Chiang, it rises in two branches in southeastern Yunnan Province and flows about 400 mi (750 km) generally east in Kwangsi Province to unite at Kuei-p'ing with the Hung-shui Ho ...
Yu Ti: the most revered and popular of Chinese Taoist deities. In the official Taoist pantheon, he is an impassive sage-deity, but he is popularly viewed as a celestial sovereign who guides human affairs and rules an enormous heavenly bureaucracy analogous to ...
Yu-lin: city in the southeast of the Kwangsi Chuang autonomous ch'u (district), China. Situated on the upper waters of the Nan-liu River, which drains southwestward into the Gulf of Tonkin to the west of Pei-hai, it is also a natural route ...
Yu-men: city in western Kansu sheng (province), China. It is situated on the ancient Silk Road from China into Central Asia.
Yu-tz'u: city, central Shansi Province (sheng), China. It is a county-level municipality (shih) and the administrative centre of Chin-chung Prefecture (ti-ch'u). Yu-tz'u has from early times been overshadowed by T'ai-yuan, nearby to the north, of which it often has been a ...
yuan: monetary unit of China. The yuan is divided into 100 fen and 10 jiao. The People's Bank of China has exclusive authority to issue currency. Banknotes are issued in denominations from 1 fen to 100 yuan. The obverse of some ...
Yuan Dynasty: (1206-1368), dynasty established in China by Mongol nomads. Yuan rule stretched throughout most of Asia and eastern Europe, though the Yuan emperors were rarely able to exercise much control over their more distant possessions.
Yuan River: river of eastern Kweichow and western Hunan provinces, southeast China.
Yuan Shih-k'ai: Chinese army leader and reformist minister in the twilight of the Manchu (Ch'ing) dynasty (until 1911) and then first president of the Republic of China (1912-16).
Yuan Zhen: a key literary figure of the middle Tang dynasty of China, influential in the guwen ("ancient-style prose") revival, which employed the styles of the early classical Chinese writers.
Yuan-ti: emperor (reigned 48-33/32) of the Han dynasty, who ardently promoted and helped firmly establish Confucianism as the official creed of China.
Yuba City: city, seat (1856) of Sutter county, north-central California, U.S. It lies in the Sacramento Valley, at the junction of the Feather and Yuba rivers, 40 miles (65 km) north of Sacramento. In 1849, during the California Gold Rush, Samuel Brannan, ...
Yubari: city, central Hokkaido, northern Japan. It lies along the upper Yubari River, in the Yubari Range. It developed as a mining town when coal was discovered in the area in the 1880s, and by the mid-20th century it was the ...
Yucatan: estada ("state"), northern Yucatan Peninsula, southeastern Mexico. It is bounded on the north by the Gulf of Mexico, on the east and southeast by Quintana Roo, and on the southwest and west by Campeche. Yucatan occupied the entire peninsula when ...
Yucatan Channel: strait connecting the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, extending for 135 miles (217 km) between Cape Catoche, Mexico, and Cape San Antonio, Cuba. The north and south equatorial currents enter the channel from the southeast and form the ...
Yucatan Current: oceanic surface current, the western limb of a clockwise gyre in the eastern Gulf of Mexico flowing from northern Honduras, through the Yucatan Channel, to the central eastern portion of the Gulf. The Yucatan Current is strongest in the summer.
Yucatan Peninsula: a northeastern projection of Central America, lying between the Gulf of Mexico to the west and north and the Caribbean Sea to the east. Encompassing some 76,300 square miles (197,600 square km), it includes the Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana ...
Yucatec language: American Indian language of the Mayan family, spoken in the Yucatan Peninsula, including not only part of Mexico but also Belize and northern Guatemala. In its classical (i.e., 16th-century) form Yucatec was the language of Yucatan, and it survives in ...
Yucatec Maya: Middle American Indians of the Yucatan Peninsula in eastern Mexico. The Yucatec were participants in the Maya civilization, whose calendar, architecture, and hieroglyphic writing marked them as a highly civilized people. Modern Yucatec range from groups highly conservative of their ...
yucca: (genus Yucca), any of about 40 species of succulent plants of the lily family Agavaceae, native to southern North America. Most species of yucca are stemless, with a rosette of stiff, sword-shaped leaves at the base and clusters of waxy ...
Yucca House National Monument: the ruins of prehistoric Native American pueblos, located 15 miles (24 km) south of the town of Cortez in the southwestern corner of Colorado, U.S., near Mesa Verde National Park. Occupying about 10 acres (4 hectares)-34 acres (14 hectares) including ...
yucca moth: (genus Tegeticula), any of four species of insects of the Prodoxidae family of moths (order Lepidoptera). The adults are small, diurnal, and have tiny spines covering their wings.
Yudenich, Nikolay: commander of the White forces in the northwest during the Russian Civil War (1918-20).
yuefu: form of Chinese poetry derived from the folk-ballad tradition. The yuefu takes its name from the Yuefu ("Music Bureau") created in 120 BC by Wudi of Han for the purpose of collecting songs and their musical scores ...
Yueh: aboriginal people of South China who in the 5th-4th century BC formed a powerful kingdom in present-day Chekiang and Fukien provinces. The name Vietnam means "south of the Yueh," and some Chinese scholars consider the Vietnamese to be descendants of ...
Yueh Fei: one of China's greatest generals and national heroes.
yueh-ch'in: Chinese lute, one of a family of flat, round-bodied lutes found in Central and East Asia. It was invented, according to tradition, during the Chin dynasty (AD 265-420). It has two pairs of silk strings, tuned (in relative pitch) to ...
Yueh-yang: city in northern Hunan sheng (province), China. The city is situated on the east bank of the outlet from the Tung-t'ing Lake into the Yangtze River, some 5 miles (8 km) from the outlet's confluence with the Yangtze. Its port ...
Yuezhi: ancient people who ruled in Bactria and India from about 128 BC to about AD 450. The Yuezhi are first mentioned in Chinese sources at the beginning of the 2nd century BC as nomads living in the western part of ...
yuga: in Hindu cosmology, an age of mankind. Each yuga is progressively shorter than the preceding one, corresponding to a decline in the moral and physical state of humanity. Four such yugas (called Krta, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali after throws of ...
Yugoslavia: former federated country situated on the west-central Balkan Peninsula.
Yui Shosetsu: Japanese rebel whose attempted coup d'etat against the Tokugawa shogunate led to increased efforts by the government to redirect the military ethos of the samurai (warrior) class toward administrative matters.
Yukaghir: remnant of an ancient human population of the tundra and taiga zones of Arctic Siberia east of the Lena River in Russia, an area with one of the most severe climates in the inhabited world. Brought close to extinction by ...
Yukaghir language: language spoken by not more than a few hundred persons in the Kolyma River region of Sakha (Yakutiya) republic of Russia. Yukaghir was traditionally grouped in the catchall category of Paleo-Siberian languages with a number of languages that are not ...