Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) rhyme or rime, the most prominent of the literary artifices used in versification. Although it was used in ancient East Asian poetry, rhyme was practically unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Wi...

(Encyclopedia) sharecropping, an agricultural system in which a landowner allows a tenant to use their land in return for a share of the crop produced. In the United S...

(Encyclopedia) San Antonio săn ăntōˈnēō, əntōnˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 935,933), seat of Bexar co., S central Tex., at the source of the San Antonio River; inc. 1837. The third largest city in Texas, it is ...

(Encyclopedia) Thoreau, Henry David thôrˈō, thərōˈ [key], 1817–62, American author, naturalist, social activist, and philosopher, b. Concord, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1837. Thoreau is considered one of the most...

(Encyclopedia) Metropolitan Opera Company, term used in referring collectively to the organizations that have produced opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City. The original house, at West 39th Street an...

(Encyclopedia) basketball, game played generally indoors by two opposing teams of five players each. Basketball was conceived in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a physical education instructor at the YMCA college in Spr...

(Encyclopedia) Minneapolis mĭnˌēăpˈəlĭs [key], city (2020 pop. 429,606), seat of Hennepin co., E Minn., at the ...

(Encyclopedia) Palau pälouˈ [key], officially Republic of Palau, independent nation (2015 est. pop. 21,000), c.192 sq mi (497 sq km), W Pacific, in the W Caroline Islands. Belau, the indigenous name for Palau, is ...

(Encyclopedia) Phoenix, city (1990 pop. 983,403), state capital and seat of Maricopa co., S Ariz., on the Salt River; inc. 1881. It is the largest city in Arizona, the hub of the rich agricultural region of the Salt...

(Encyclopedia) postmodernism, term used to designate a multitude of trends—in the arts, philosophy, religion, technology, and many other areas—that come after and deviate from the many 20th-cent. movements that ...