Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) migration, of people, geographical movements of individuals or groups for the purpose of permanently resettling. Normal internal migration has been characterized by a population shift from rural t...

(Encyclopedia) United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), specialized agency of the United Nations, with headquarters in Paris. Its counterpart in the League of Nations was the Inter...

(Encyclopedia) Tangier, island, E Va., in S Chesapeake Bay. Capt. John Smith first visited the island in 1608, and in 1620 settlers arrived from Cornwall, England. Isolated from the mainland, the people of Tangier d...

(Encyclopedia) orphan drug, drug developed under the U.S. Orphan Drug Act (1983) to treat a disease that affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. The orphan drug law offers tax breaks and a seven-year...

(Encyclopedia) psycholinguistics, the study of psychological states and mental activity associated with the use of language. An important focus of psycholinguistics is the largely unconscious application of grammati...

(Encyclopedia) Tutsi wä– [key], cattle-raising people of central Africa, particularly in Burundi and Rwanda; they are also known as Watusi or Batusi. The original Tutsi homeland was probably in Ethiopia, and c.40...

(Encyclopedia) Semite sĕmˈīt, sēˈmīt [key], originally one of a people believed to be descended from Shem, son of Noah. Later the term came to include the following peoples: Arabs; the Akkadians of ancient Bab...

(Encyclopedia) parable, the term translates the Hebrew word “mashal”—a term denoting a metaphor, or an enigmatic saying or an analogy. In the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition, however, “parables” were illu...

(Encyclopedia) Sankara, Thomas 1948–87, president (1983–87) of Burkina Faso. Thomas Sankara, sometimes referred to as the African Che Guevara, was an activist, mil...

(Encyclopedia) Nujoma, Sam (Samuel Daniel Shafiishuna Nujoma) no͞oyōˈmä [key], 1929–, Namibian political leader. A railway worker in what was then the South African mandate of South West Africa, Nujoma became ...