Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Zefat zĕfˈät [key], town (1994 pop. 21,600), NE Israel. One of Israel's four holy cities, it has a thriving artists' colony and many museums and ancient synagogues. Ceramics, diamonds, and handicra...

(Encyclopedia) Scholem, Gershom Gerhard gĕrˈshôm gĕrˈhärt shōˈləm [key], 1897–1982, Jewish scholar, b. Berlin. He studied at the universities of Berlin, Jena, Bern, and Munich. Scholem received (1922) his...

(Encyclopedia) Littré, Maximilien Paul Émile mäksēmēlyăNˈ pōl āmēlˈ lētrāˈ [key], 1801–81, French lexicographer. Known as a positivist philosopher and as professor of history and geography at the Éc...

(Encyclopedia) Bingham, Hiram, 1831–1908, American Congregationalist missionary, b. Honolulu; son of Hiram Bingham (1789–1869). In 1857 he founded a mission on Abaiang in the Gilbert Islands (now part of Kiribat...

(Encyclopedia) Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, 1854–1927, American educator and classical scholar, b. Randolph, Mass. Wheeler was a professor of Greek and comparative philology at Cornell before serving as president of the...

(Encyclopedia) Koberger, Anton änˈtōn kōˈbĕrˌgûr [key], c.1445–1513, German printer. He established in 1470 the first printery in Nuremberg. In 1483 he produced a German Bible and in 1484 the first book pr...

(Encyclopedia) inflection, in grammar. In many languages, words or parts of words are arranged in formally similar sets consisting of a root, or base, and various affixes. Thus walking, walks, walker have in common ...

(Encyclopedia) writing, the visible recording of language peculiar to the human species. Writing enables the transmission of ideas over vast distances of time and space and is a prerequisite of complex civilization....

(Encyclopedia) Anatolian languages ănˌətōˈlēən [key], subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see The Indo-European Family of Languages, tableIndo-European, table); the term “Anatolian languages...

(Encyclopedia) Estienne, Étienne stĕfˈənəs [key], family of Parisian and Genevan printers of the 16th and 17th cent., distinguished through five generations in scholarship as well as in their craft. The first ...