Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) epistle ĭpĭsˈəl [key], in the Bible, a letter of the New Testament. The Pauline Epistles (ascribed to St. Paul) are Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossi...

(Encyclopedia) cladistics fīˌlōjənĕtˈĭk [key], an approach to the classification of living things in which organisms are defined and grouped by the possession of one or more shared characteristics (called cha...

(Encyclopedia) epidemic, outbreak of disease that affects a much greater number of people than is usual for the locality or that spreads to regions where it is ordinarily not present. A disease that tends to be rest...

(Encyclopedia) Hippocrates hĭpŏkˈrətēz [key], c.460–c.370 b.c., Greek physician, recognized as the father of medicine. He is believed to have been born on the island of Cos, to have studied under his father, ...

(Encyclopedia) Tillich, Paul Johannes tĭlˈĭk [key], 1886–1965, American philosopher and theologian, b. Germany, educated at the universities of Berlin, Tübingen, Halle, and Breslau. In 1912 he was ordained a m...

(Encyclopedia) Turkic tûrˈkĭk [key], group of languages forming a subdivision of the Altaic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see Uralic and Altaic languages). The Turkic group of languages has a ...

(Encyclopedia) gender [Lat. genus=kind], in grammar, subclassification of nouns or nounlike words in which the members of the subclass have characteristic features of agreement with other words. The term gender is n...

(Encyclopedia) Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de zhäN bätēstˈ pyĕr äNtwänˈdə mônāˈ, shəvälyāˈ də lämärkˈ [key], 1744–1829, French naturalist. He is noted for his stud...

(Encyclopedia) distribution, in economics, the allocation of a society's total wealth among various economic groups. Distribution, in that sense, does not refer to the physical marketing or circulation of goods, whi...

(Encyclopedia) toy dog, classification used by breeders and kennel clubs to designate very small breeds of dogs kept as pets. Some are selectively bred diminutive forms of larger breeds and others are naturally smal...