Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Danish language, member of the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. The official language of Denmark, it is spoken by over 5 milli...

(Encyclopedia) stratosphere strătˈəsfēr [key], second lowest layer of the earth's atmosphere. The level from which it extends outward varies with latitude; it begins c.51⁄2 mi (9 km) above the poles, c.6 or 7 ...

(Encyclopedia) telegraph, term originally applied to any device or system for distant communication by means of visible or audible signals, now commonly restricted to electrically operated devices. Attempts at long-...

(Encyclopedia) radiation rāˌdēāˈshən [key], term applied to the emission and transmission of energy through space or through a material medium and also to the radiated energy itself. In its widest sense the te...

(Encyclopedia) Thomas, Dylan dĭlˈən [key], 1914–53, Welsh poet, b. Swansea. An extraordinarily individualistic writer, Thomas is ranked among the great 20th-century poets. He grew up in Swansea, the son of a te...

(Encyclopedia) Browning, Robert, 1812–89, English poet. His remarkably broad and sound education was primarily the work of his artistic and scholarly parents—in particular his father, a London bank clerk of inde...

(Encyclopedia) physics, branch of science traditionally defined as the study of matter, energy, and the relation between them; it was called natural philosophy until the late 19th cent. and is still known by this na...

(Encyclopedia) New Haven, city (1990 pop. 130,474), New Haven co., S Conn., a port of entry where the Quinnipiac and other small rivers enter Long Island Sound; inc. 1784. Firearms and ammunition, clocks and watches...

(Encyclopedia) cricket, common name of the slender, chirping, hopping insects forming the family Gryllidae in the order Orthoptera. Most crickets have long antennae, muscular hind legs for jumping, and two pairs of ...