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Ine
Ine , king of Wessex (688-726). In 694 he forced the people of Kent to pay compensation for the murder of a kinsman, and he extended his sway over Sussex and Surrey and probably over Devon. He also forwarded the diocesan reorganization of the church, founding (705) a bishopric at Sherborne. His code...
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Abraham Cahan
Abraham Cahan , 1860-1951, Russian-American journalist, Socialist leader, and author, b. Vilnius, Lithuania. He emigrated to New York City in 1882, entered journalism, and helped found the Jewish Daily Forward (1897); as editor in chief after 1902, he made it the most influential Jewish daily in A...
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nuclear winter
nuclear winter theory holding that the smoke and dust produced by a large nuclear war would result in a prolonged period of cold on the earth. The earliest version of the theory, which was put forward in the early 1980s in the so-called TTAPS report (named for last initials of its authors, Richard ...
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Great Leap Forward
Great Leap Forward 1957-60, Chinese economic plan aimed at revitalizing all sectors of the economy. Initiated by Mao Zedong , the plan emphasized decentralized, labor-intensive industrialization, typified by the construction of thousands of backyard steel furnaces in place of large steel mills. Wi...
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Robert Burton
Robert Burton 1577-1640, English clergyman and scholar, b. Leicestershire, educated at Oxford. He served as librarian at Christ Church, Oxford, all his life; in addition he was vicar of St. Thomas, Oxford, and later was rector of Seagrave, Leicestershire. A bachelor, he led an uneventful, scholarly...
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figure of speech
figure of speech intentional departure from straight-forward, literal use of language for the purpose of clarity, emphasis, or freshness of expression. See separate articles on antithesis ; apostrophe ; conceit ; hyperbole ; irony ; litotes ; metaphor ; metonymy ; paradox ; personificatio...
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yawl
yawl sailing vessel, usually fore-and-aft rigged, with a large mainmast forward. It carries a mainsail and jibs and a much smaller mizzenmast abaft the rudder post. In the United States yawls are in wide use as yachts.
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ketch
ketch fore-and-aft-rigged sailing vessel with a mainmast forward carrying a mainsail and jibs. It has a mizzenmast aft, stepped forward of the rudder post. In the United States, ketch-rigged vessels are widely used today as yachts. The term was formerly applied to a two-masted square-rigged vessel ...
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John Fisher
John Fisher (Saint John Fisher), c.1469-1535, English prelate, cardinal, bishop of Rochester (1504-34). Known for his scholarship at Cambridge, he was chosen confessor to Margaret Beaufort , mother of Henry VII. As vice chancellor of the university (1501-4) and chancellor thereafter, he helped car...
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jet engine
jet engine Form of gas turbine engine that derives forward motion by reaction to the rapid discharge of a jet of gas in the opposite direction. In a jet engine, fuel burns in oxygen from the air to produce a fast-moving stream of exhaust gases. These are ejected from the back of the jet engine and ...
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