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  • Darrieus turbine (technology)
    ...by the French engineer G.J.M. Darrieus. Its two blades consist of twisted metal strips tied to the shaft at the top and bottom and bowed out in the middle similar to the blades on a food mixer. A Darrieus turbine with aluminum blades erected in 1980 by the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico produced 60 kilowatts in a wind blowing 12.5 metres per second. Turbines of this variety are......
  • Darrieussecq, Marie (French author)
    ...Particles, also published as Atomised) are splenetic victims of their own failure of nerve, attacking a society in their own image, narcissistic and world-weary. Marie Darrieussecq’s Truismes (1996; Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation) is a more dynamic novel; it is an imaginative political ...
  • D’Arrigo, Stefano (Italian author)
    ...considerable literary production—his best-known novel is Il giorno del giudizio (1979; The Day of Judgement)—was not revealed until after his death. Meanwhile, Stefano D’Arrigo was being supported by publisher Arnoldo Mondadori to compose his ambitious modern epic, Horcynus Orca (1975), 20 years in the making, which narrates the 1943 h...
  • Darrow, Charles B. (American engineer)
    Monopoly, which is the best-selling privately patented board game in history, gained popularity in the United States during the Great Depression when Charles B. Darrow, an unemployed heating engineer, sold the concept to Parker Brothers in 1935. Before then, homemade versions of a similar game had circulated in many parts of the United States. Most were based on the Landlord’s Game, a board...
  • Darrow, Clarence (American lawyer)
    lawyer whose work as defense counsel in many dramatic criminal trials earned him a place in American legal history. He was also well-known as a public speaker, debater, and miscellaneous writer....
  • Darrow, Clarence Seward (American lawyer)
    lawyer whose work as defense counsel in many dramatic criminal trials earned him a place in American legal history. He was also well-known as a public speaker, debater, and miscellaneous writer....
  • Darrow, Whitney, Jr. (American cartoonist)
    American cartoonist who published more than 1,500 cartoons in The New Yorker magazine from 1933 to 1982 (b. Aug. 22, 1909, Princeton, N.J.—d. Aug. 10, 1999, Burlington, Vt.)....
  • Darrtse-mdo (China)
    town, western Sichuan sheng (province) and capital of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, China. Kangding is on the Tuo River, a tributary of the Dadu River, 62 miles (100 km) west of Ya’an on the main route from Sichuan into the Tibet Autonomous Region. It lies at an elevation of 8,400 feet (2...
  • darshan (Hinduism)
    in Hindu worship, the beholding of a deity (especially in image form), revered person, or sacred object. The experience is often conceived to be reciprocal and results in the human viewer’s receiving a blessing. The Rathayatras (chariot festivals), in which images of gods are taken in procession through the streets, enable even those who in former days ...
  • darshana (Hinduism)
    in Hindu worship, the beholding of a deity (especially in image form), revered person, or sacred object. The experience is often conceived to be reciprocal and results in the human viewer’s receiving a blessing. The Rathayatras (chariot festivals), in which images of gods are taken in procession through the streets, enable even those who in former days ...
  • d’Arsonval galvanometer (instrument)
    The most common type is the D’Arsonval galvanometer, in which the indicating system consists of a light coil of wire suspended from a metallic ribbon between the poles of a permanent magnet. The magnetic field produced by a current passing through the coil reacts with the magnetic field of the permanent magnet, producing a torque, or twisting force. The coil, to which an indicating needle o...
  • Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms (work by Friedländer)
    ...in the history of civilization. After a period of work on Greek culture in 1847 and a trip to Italy in 1853–54, he taught philology and archaeology and worked on his masterpiece, the Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, 3 vol. (1864–71; “Representations from Roman Cultural History”), a detailed and vivid portrait of the social life, customs, art, and.....
  • DART (transit system, Dublin, Ireland)
    ...but this inevitably has a great effect on the capital. The Dublin Port Tunnel, Ireland’s largest civil engineering project, opened in 2006 and links the port to the national motorway network. The Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) train service runs along the coast from Malahide and Howth in County Fingal to Greystones, County Wicklow, in the south. A tram system from St. Stephen’s ...
  • dart (weaponry)
    Darts are the most common blowgun missiles. They are usually made from palm-leaf midribs or from wood or bamboo splinters, and they may vary from 4 to 100 cm (1.5 to 40 inches) in length. A conelike bit of pith or a twist of fibre at the base of the dart makes it fit the tube snugly, ensuring that it will fly out of the tube from a puff of human breath. Clay pellets or bits of bone are also......
  • Dart, Raymond A. (Australian anthropologist)
    Australian-born South African physical anthropologist and paleontologist whose discoveries of fossil hominins (members of the human lineage) led to significant insights into human evolution....
  • Dart, Raymond Arthur (Australian anthropologist)
    Australian-born South African physical anthropologist and paleontologist whose discoveries of fossil hominins (members of the human lineage) led to significant insights into human evolution....
  • Dart, Thurston (British musician)
    English musicologist, harpsichordist, and conductor....
  • darter (fish)
    any of about 100 species of small, slender freshwater fishes constituting the subfamily Etheostominae of the family Percidae (order Perciformes; sometimes given family standing as the Etheostomidae). All the darters are native to eastern North America. They live near the bottom of clear streams, darting quickly about when feeding or when disturbed. They prey on such small aquatic animals as insec...
  • darter (bird)
    any bird of the family Anhingidae (order Pelecaniformes), sometimes regarded as a single species, Anhinga anhinga, with geographical variants. A large (about 90 cm [35 inches] long), slender, long-necked water bird, it is mostly black, with silvery wing markings. Males, glossed with green, develop pale head plumes and a dark “mane” in breeding season; females are plainer, with...
  • Dartford (district, England, United Kingdom)
    town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Kent, England. It lies along the south bank of the River Thames, just east of and adjoining the metropolitan area of Greater London. In ancient times it was a marketing centre. The fording of the River Darent by the London-Canterbury road gave Dartford its name. Because of its location on the main route between London and the......
  • Dartford (England, United Kingdom)
    town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Kent, England. It lies along the south bank of the River Thames, just east of and adjoining the metropolitan area of Greater London. In ancient times it was a marketing centre. The fording of the River Darent by the London-Canterbury road gave Dartford its name. Because of its location on the main route between L...
  • Dartmoor (sheep)
    The name is also given to a breed of long-wooled, hornless English sheep....
  • Dartmoor (pony)
    breed of pony about 12 hands (48 inches, or 122 cm) tall, hardy, and semiwild in its native Dartmoor, Devon, Eng. It is one of nine horse breeds native to the British Isles, and it is exported....
  • Dartmoor (region, England, United Kingdom)
    wild upland area in the west of the county of Devon, southwestern England. It extends for about 23 miles (37 km) north-south and 20 miles (32 km) east-west. The moorland is bleak and desolate, and heather is the chief vegetation. Isolated weathered rocks (tors) rise from the granite plateau; the highest are Yes Tor (2,030 feet [619 m]) and High Willhays (2,038 feet)....
  • Dartmoor Forest (region, England, United Kingdom)
    wild upland area in the west of the county of Devon, southwestern England. It extends for about 23 miles (37 km) north-south and 20 miles (32 km) east-west. The moorland is bleak and desolate, and heather is the chief vegetation. Isolated weathered rocks (tors) rise from the granite plateau; the highest are Yes Tor (2,030 feet [619 m]) and High Willhays (2,038 feet)....
  • Dartmoor National Park (national park, England, United Kingdom)
    Within Devon’s boundaries is a wide variety of scenery, including the Dartmoor National Park and, in the north, part of the Exmoor National Park. Dartmoor, with shallow marshy valleys, thin infertile soils, and a vegetation of coarse grasses, heather, and bracken, is a granite plateau rising to more than 2,000 feet (600 metres), the crests capped by granite tors (rocky peaks); the moor is u...
  • Dartmoor Prison (prison, Devon, England, United Kingdom)
    ...ponies, sheep, and cattle; quarrying (granite and china clay) and tourism are other important activities. There are few settlements; the largest is Princetown, founded in 1806 to serve adjoining Dartmoor Prison, which was built to hold French captives from the Napoleonic Wars. Since 1850 it has been England’s chief confinement centre for serious offenders....
  • Dartmouth (England, United Kingdom)
    town (“parish”), South Hams district, administrative and historic county of Devon, England. It lies along the English Channel and the west bank of the River Dart estuary. A yachting centre, it has boatbuilding, light engineering, and pottery industries. The castle (1481) guarded the entrance to the estuary, from which Richard I’s Crusaders...
  • Dartmouth (Massachusetts, United States)
    town (township), Bristol county, southeastern Massachusetts, U.S. It lies along Buzzards Bay, adjacent to New Bedford. The site, part of a land purchase made by William Bradford and Captain Myles Standish from the Wampanoag Indian chief Massasoit, was settled by Quakers in the 1650s. I...
  • Dartmouth College (college, New Hampshire, United States)
    private, coeducational liberal arts college in Hanover, N.H., U.S., one of the Ivy League schools....
  • Dartmouth College case (law case)
    U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court held that the charter of Dartmouth College granted in 1769 by King George III of England was a contract and, as such, could not be impaired by the New Hampshire legislature. The charter vested control of the college in a self-perpetuating board of trustees, which, as a result of a religious controversy, removed John Wheelock as college ...
  • Dartmouth Dam (dam, Australia)
    ...state governments and the commonwealth, was established to regulate utilization of the river’s waters. The largest reservoirs are the Dartmouth on the Mitta Mitta River and the Hume on the Murray. Dartmouth’s dam, 180 m (591 feet) high, is the highest dam in the southern hemisphere. The multipurpose Snowy Mountains scheme (completed in 1974), increased the amount of water availabl...
  • Dartmouth of Dartmouth, George Legge, 1st Baron (British admiral)
    British admiral and commander in chief who is best known for his service during the reigns of Charles II and James II....
  • Dartmouth, William Legge, 2nd earl of, Viscount Lewisham, Baron Dartmouth of Dartmouth (British statesman)
    British statesman who played a significant role in the events leading to the American Revolution....
  • dartos (muscle)
    ...pigmented, devoid of fatty tissue, and more or less folded and wrinkled. There are some scattered hairs and sebaceous glands on its surface. Below the skin is a layer of involuntary muscle, the dartos, which can alter the appearance of the scrotum. On exposure of the scrotum to cold air or cold water, the dartos contracts and gives the scrotum a shortened, corrugated appearance; warmth......
  • darts (game)
    indoor target game played by throwing feathered darts at a circular board with numbered spaces. The game became popular in English inns and taverns in the 19th century and increasingly so in the 20th....
  • Daru (town, Papua New Guinea)
    ...Pacific Ocean. Daru Island is located in the Gulf of Papua near the mouth of the Oriomo River, southwest of the Fly River Delta. The island rises to 79 feet (24 metres) and has mangrove swamps. Daru town is an administrative centre and has a small wharf used by fishing vessels; fish-processing factories freeze barramundi and crayfish for export. Crocodile skins from farms in the province......
  • Daru (island, Papua New Guinea)
    port and small island, southwestern Papua New Guinea, southwestern Pacific Ocean. Daru Island is located in the Gulf of Papua near the mouth of the Oriomo River, southwest of the Fly River Delta. The island rises to 79 feet (24 metres) and has mangrove swamps. Daru town is an administrative centre and has a small wharf used by fishing vessels; fish-processing factories freeze ba...
  • Daru Island (island, Papua New Guinea)
    port and small island, southwestern Papua New Guinea, southwestern Pacific Ocean. Daru Island is located in the Gulf of Papua near the mouth of the Oriomo River, southwest of the Fly River Delta. The island rises to 79 feet (24 metres) and has mangrove swamps. Daru town is an administrative centre and has a small wharf used by fishing vessels; fish-processing factories freeze ba...
  • Daru, Pierre-Antoine-Noel-Mattieu-Bruno, Comte (French military administrator)
    French military administrator and organizer during the Napoleonic period....
  • darughatchi (Mongolian official)
    ...return to Chinese traditions in those domains ruled by former subjects of the Jin state. The most important office or function in Mongol administration was that of the darughatchi (seal bearer), whose powers were at first all-inclusive; only gradually were subfunctions entrusted to specialized officials in accordance with Chinese bureaucratic tradition......
  • Daruma (Indian Buddhist monk)
    legendary Indian monk who, according to tradition, is credited with the establishment of the Ch’an (Japanese: Zen) sect of Buddhism....
  • Darwell, Jane (American actress)
    Other Nominees...
  • Darwin (Northern Territory, Australia)
    capital and chief port of Northern Territory, Australia. It is situated on a low peninsula northeast of the entrance to its harbour, Port Darwin, a deep inlet of Beagle Gulf of the Timor Sea. The harbour was found in 1839 by John Stokes, surveyor aboard the ship HMS Beagle, and it was named after the British naturalist Charles Darwin. The site was not settled until 1869 a...
  • Darwin Among the Machines (article by Butler)
    ...outsider, or as Butler called himself after the biblical outcast, “an Ishmael.” To the New Zealand Press he contributed several articles on Darwinian topics, of which two—“Darwin Among the Machines” (1863) and “Lucubratio Ebria” (1865)—were later worked up in Erewhon. Both show him already grappling with the central problem o...
  • Darwin, Charles (British naturalist)
    English naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies. An affable country gentleman, Darwin at first shocked religious Victorian society by suggesting that animals and humans shared a common ancestry. However, his nonreligious biology appealed to the rising class of professional scientists, and b...
  • Darwin, Charles Robert (British naturalist)
    English naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies. An affable country gentleman, Darwin at first shocked religious Victorian society by suggesting that animals and humans shared a common ancestry. However, his nonreligious biology appealed to the rising class of professional scientists, and b...
  • Darwin Cordillera (mountains, South America)
    ...rock found south of latitude 50° S along the axis of the cordillera have been interpreted as ocean floor of a back-arc marginal basin. Metamorphic rocks of Andean age are preserved only in the Darwin Cordillera along the Fuegian Andes of Chile. The eastern sub-Andean belt is composed of a series of back-arc and foreland basins, in which sediments more than five miles thick have......
  • Darwin, Erasmus (British physician)
    British physician, poet, and botanist noted for his republican politics and materialistic theory of evolution. Although today he is best known as the grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin and of biologist Sir Francis Galton, Erasmus Darwin was an important figure of the Enlightenment in his own right....
  • Darwin, Frances Crofts (British poet)
    English poet, perhaps known chiefly, and unfairly, for the sadly comic poem To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train (“O fat white woman whom nobody loves, / Why do you walk through the fields in gloves…”)....
  • Darwin, Mount (mountain, South America)
    ...area that includes the subregion of Magallanes and sometimes Chilean Tierra del Fuego. There significant heights are still reached: Mount San Valentín is more than 12,000 feet high, and Mount Darwin in Tierra del Fuego reaches almost 8,000 feet. Reminders of the last ice age are the perfectly U-shaped glacial troughs, sharp-edged mountains, Andean lakes, and some 7,000 square miles......
  • Darwin Rise (geological feature, Pacific Ocean)
    submarine topographic rise underlying a vast area of the western and central Pacific, corresponding in location to a large topographic rise that existed during the Mesozoic Era (65,000,000 to 225,000,000 years ago), and named in honour of Charles Darwin. The rise stretches more than 6,000 miles (10,000 km) roughly from the area just east of the Mariana Trench southeast to the Tuámotu Archi...
  • Darwin, Sir George Howard (British astronomer)
    English astronomer who championed the theory that the Moon was once part of the Earth, until it was pulled free to form a satellite....
  • Darwinian fitness (biology)
    ...In this way the more successful variants would make a greater contribution to subsequent generations in the number of offspring. For such selection to act continuously in successive generations, Darwin also recognized that the variations had to be inherited, although he failed to fathom the mechanism of heredity. Moreover, the amount of variation is particularly important. According to what......
  • Darwinian subsidence theory
    The oceanic atoll reefs of the Pacific Ocean rise from volcanic cones that have subsided, probably intermittently, in areas of oceanic deeps. According to the Darwinian subsidence theory, the annular atoll reefs extend and grade downward into barrier reefs. The theory suggests that these barrier reefs originated as reefs that fringed a volcanic cone. On the other hand, the compound atoll reefs......
  • Darwinism (biology)
    theory of the evolutionary mechanism propounded by Charles Darwin as an explanation of organic change. It denotes Darwin’s specific view of how the process of evolution works....
  • darwinoec_entitytest
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  • darwinoec_santafe_07
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  • Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (work by Behe)
    The call for an intelligent designer is predicated on the existence of irreducible complexity in organisms. In Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), an irreducibly complex system is defined as being “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the re...
  • Darwin’s finch (bird group)
    distinctive group of birds whose radiation into several ecological niches in the competition-free isolation of the Galapagos Islands and on Cocos Island gave the English naturalist Charles Darwin evidence for his thesis that “species are not immutable.” The three genera (Geospiza, Camarhynchus [see ], and ...
  • Darwin’s frog (frog)
    (Rhinoderma darwinii), a small Argentinian and Chilean frog that is one of the few species in the family Rhinodermatidae. Charles Darwin discovered the frog on his world voyage....
  • Darwin’s rhea (bird)
    ...to South America and are related to the ostrich and emu. The common rhea (Rhea americana; see photograph) is found in open country from northeastern Brazil southward to Argentina, while Darwin’s rhea (Pterocnemia pennata) lives from Peru southward to Patagonia, at the tip of the continent. Both species are considerably smaller than the ostrich; the common rhea stands about....
  • Darwin’s toad (frog)
    (Rhinoderma darwinii), a small Argentinian and Chilean frog that is one of the few species in the family Rhinodermatidae. Charles Darwin discovered the frog on his world voyage....
  • Darwin’s tubercle (anatomy)
    ...An inner, concentric ridge, the antihelix, surrounds the concha and is separated from the helix by a furrow, the scapha, also called the fossa of the helix. In some ears a little prominence known as Darwin’s tubercle is seen along the upper, posterior portion of the helix; it is the vestige of the folded-over point of the ear of a remote human ancestor. The lobule, the fleshy lower part ...
  • darwīsh (Ṣūfīsm)
    any member of a Ṣūfī (Muslim mystic) fraternity, or tariqa. Within the Ṣūfī fraternities, which were first organized in the 12th century, an established leadership and a prescribed discipline obliged the dervish postulant to serve his sheikh, or master, and to establish a rapport with him. The postulant was also expected to learn the ...
  • Darwīsh, Maḥmūd (Palestinian poet)
    Palestinian poet who gave voice to the struggles of the Palestinian people....
  • Darwīsh, Sayyid (Islamic musician)
    ...well known are singers; those particularly influential in the modern renaissance, in chronological order, include ʿAbduh al-Ḥamūlī, Dāhūd Ḥussnī, Sayyid Darwīsh, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Umm Kulthūm, Farid al-Aṭrash, Fayrouz, Rashid al-Hundarashi,......
  • Daryā-e Nūr (diamond)
    largest and finest diamond in the crown jewels of Iran. A pale-pink, tablet-shaped stone weighing about 185 carats, it is from Golconda, Andhra Pradesh, India. Inscribed on a rear facet is the name of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh and the date 1834, the year of his death. Experts from the Royal Ontario Museum have postulated that the Daryā-e Nūr (meaning “sea of ...
  • Daryā-ye Farāh Rūd (river, Afghanistan)
    river in western Afghanistan, rising on the southern slopes of the Band-e Bāyan Range, flowing southwest past the town of Farāh, and emptying into the Helmand (Sīstān) swamps on the Iranian border after a course of 350 miles (560 km). The river fluctuates greatly with the seasons, sometimes flooding in the spring and becoming impassable. Its waters are used for irrigati...
  • Daryā-ye Helmand (river, Central Asia)
    river in southwestern Afghanistan and eastern Iran, about 715 miles (1,150 km) long. Rising in the Bābā Range in east-central Afghanistan, it flows southwestward across more than half the length of Afghanistan before flowing northward for a short distance through Iranian territory and emptying into the Helmand (Sīstān) swamps on the Afghan-Iranian border. It receives se...
  • Daryā-ye Kābul (river, Pakistan-Afghanistan)
    river in eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, 435 miles (700 km) long, of which 350 miles are in Afghanistan. Rising in the Sanglākh Range 45 miles west of Kabul city, it flows east past Kabul and Jalālābād, north of the Khyber Pass into Pakistan, and past Peshāwar; it joins the Indus River northwest of Islāmābād. The river has four...
  • Daryāye Khezer (sea, Eurasia)
    world’s largest inland body of water, lying to the east of the Caucasus Mountains and to the west of the vast steppe of Central Asia. Its name derives from the ancient Kaspi peoples, who once lived in Transcaucasia to the west; among its other historical names, Khazarsk and Khvalynsk derive from former peoples of the region, while Girkansk stems from Gi...
  • Daryoi Amu (river, Asia)
    one of the longest rivers of Central Asia. It is formed by the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj (Pyandzh) rivers and flows west-northwest to its mouth on the southern shore of the Aral Sea. In its upper course the Amu Darya forms part of Afghanistan’s northern border with Tajikistan, Uzb...
  • Daryoi Sir (river, Central Asia)
    river in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. The Syr Darya is formed by the confluence of the Naryn and Qoradaryo rivers in the eastern Fergana Valley and generally flows northwest until it empties into the Aral Sea. With a length of 1,374 miles (2,212 km)—1,876 miles (3,019 km) including the Naryn—the Syr Darya is the longest riv...
  • Das, Chitta Ranjan (Indian political leader)
    politician and leader of the Swaraj (Independence) Party in Bengal under British rule....
  • Das, Govinda (Bengali poet)
    Another form of religious lyric are the so-called padas (verses). Govinda Das (1537–1612) is one of the greatest poets in this bhakti genre of poetry in which divine love is symbolized by human love. The songs of Ramprasad Sen (1718–75) similarly honour Shakti as mother of the universe and are still in wide.....
  • Das, Jibanananda (Indian poet)
    If Tagore was the last poet in the Bengali tradition, Jibanananda Das was the first of a new breed. Musing and melancholy, yet known for vivid and unusual imagery Jibananada is a poet who has much influence on younger writers in Bengal. There have been many other poets in the 20th century who are equally powerful but stand somewhat apart from the mainstream. One of these was Sudhindranath......
  • ’Das-log Snang-sa (Tibetan play)
    The most common type of a-che-lha-mo is the drama based on legend and mythology which often reflects a strong influence of Indian theatrical tradition. An example is the play ’Das-log Snang-sa. The phrase ’das-log means to return (log) from the beyond (’das) and is used in Tibetan to refer to anyone who was believed to be dead and then return...
  • dāsa (people)
    member of an aboriginal people in India encountered and embattled by the invading Aryans (c. 1500 bc). They were described by the Aryans as a dark-skinned, harsh-spoken people who worshiped the phallus. This allusion has persuaded many scholars that worship of the linga, the Hindu religious symbol, originated with the...
  • Dasa (African people)
    ...Yedina (Buduma) and Kuri inhabit the Lake Chad region and, in the Kanem area, are associated with the Kanembu and Tunjur, who are of Arabic origin. All of these groups are sedentary and coexist with Daza, Kreda, and Arab nomads. The Hadjeray (of the Guera Massif) and Abou Telfân are composed of refugee populations who, living on their mountainous terrain, have resisted various invasions....
  • Dasa (German company)
    ...Aerospatiale (later Aerospatiale Matra), created by the merger of Sud Aviation with Nord Aviation and the French missile maker SEREB, and 50 percent came from Germany’s Deutsche Airbus (later DaimlerChrysler Aerospace Airbus), a joint venture in which Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm had a 65 percent stake and VFW-Fokker a 35 percent stake. Spain’s Construcciones Aeronáuti...
  • dasa-bhritaka (people)
    member of an aboriginal people in India encountered and embattled by the invading Aryans (c. 1500 bc). They were described by the Aryans as a dark-skinned, harsh-spoken people who worshiped the phallus. This allusion has persuaded many scholars that worship of the linga, the Hindu religious symbol, originated with the...
  • dasa-sīla (Buddhism)
    Buddhist morality is codified in the form of 10 precepts (dasa-sīla), which require abstention from: (1) taking life; (2) taking what is not given; (3) committing sexual misconduct (interpreted as anything less than chastity for the monk and as sexual conduct contrary to proper social norms, such as adultery, for the layman); (4) engaging in false speech; (5) using intoxicants; (6).....
  • Daśaharā (Hindu festival)
    At the Daśaharā festival (September) after the monsoon rains, girls carrying pitchers go from house to house and dance around the garabi, decorated pots containing offerings that are hung in the doorways. Later they celebrate by dancing around images of the goddess of plenty and prosperity, Mātājī. The garabā dances are also performed at the....
  • “Daśakumāracarita” (work by Daṇḍin)
    Indian Sanskrit writer of prose romances and expounder on poetics. Scholars attribute to him with certainty only two works: the Daśakumāracarita, translated in 1927 as The Adventures of the Ten Princes, and the Kāvyādarśa (“Mirror of Poetry”)....
  • Daśalakṣaṇa (Jaina festival)
    ...sect from the 13th day of the dark half of the month Bhādrapada (August–September) to the 5th day of the bright half of the month. Among Digambaras, a corresponding festival is called Daśalakṣaṇa, and it begins immediately following the Śvetāmbara Paryuṣaṇa....
  • Dasam Granth (Sikh writings)
    collection of writings attributed to Gurū Gobind Singh, the tenth and last spiritual leader of the Sikhs, a religious group in India. Dasam Granth is a short title for Dasven Pādśāh kā Graṅth (Punjabi: “The Book of the Tenth Emperor [i.e., spiritual leader]”). It is a compilation of hymns, philosophica...
  • Daśanāmī Sannyasi (Hinduism)
    ...and Ramanuja (11th century ce). These teachers interpreted Vedanta theology (a religio-philosophical system concerned with the nature of ultimate reality) in incompatible ways. Shankara’s order of Dashanami Sannyasi has traditionally set the monastic standards for the rest of Hindu India. Based on a nondualistic reading of the four “great dicta” (......
  • Dasavant (Mughal painter)
    Of the large number of painters who worked in the imperial atelier, the most outstanding were Dasvant and Basāvan. The former played the leading part in the illustration of the Razm-nāmeh. Basāvan, who is preferred by some to Dasvant, painted in a very distinctive style, which delighted in the tactile and the plastic, and with an unerring grasp of psychological......
  • Daschle, Tom (American politician)
    On June 6, 2001, the U.S. Senate passed from Republican to Democratic control, and Tom Daschle of South Dakota became the new majority leader. The shift occurred without a single change in membership when Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party to become an independent, which gave the Democrats a 50–49 majority. The Democrats under Daschle thus suddenly found themselves wit...
  • Dascylium (historical city, Turkey)
    ...such as Lycia and western Cilicia, but they are also recognizable in other southern provinces such as Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Lycaonia. The Persian influence was strong in the northeastern city of Dascylium, an originally Lydian settlement that was chosen to be the administrative centre of the satrapy (province) of Hellespontine Phrygia. Aramaic was the official language in the western parts......
  • DASD (computing)
    When so-called direct-access storage devices (DASDs; primarily magnetic disks) were developed, it became possible to access a random data block on the disk. (A data block is the unit of transfer between main memory and auxiliary storage and usually consists of several records.) Files can then be indexed so that an arbitrary record can be located and fetched......
  • Dase (Ethiopia)
    town, central Ethiopia, situated on the western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley at an elevation of 7,500 feet (2,300 m). Dese (Amharic: “My Joy”) is a commercial and communications centre, 16 miles (25 km) northwest of Kembolcha, which is at the junction of roads to Addis Ababa and Asmara and Asseb in Eritrea. Dese is a long-established market for grains, oilseeds, hides, skins,...
  • Dasehra (Hindu festival)
    At the Daśaharā festival (September) after the monsoon rains, girls carrying pitchers go from house to house and dance around the garabi, decorated pots containing offerings that are hung in the doorways. Later they celebrate by dancing around images of the goddess of plenty and prosperity, Mātājī. The garabā dances are also performed at the....
  • daseian notation (music)
    ...description of music in several voices: parallel organum, in which a plainchant melody is sung in parallel fourths or parallel fifths. De alia musica deals with a notational system called daseian notation. Although it never became generally accepted, it was an early attempt to show exact pitch in musical notation; it used symbols showing 18 specific pitches and placed the words to be......
  • Dasein (philosophy)
    ...and with other men, existence is always a being-in-the-world—i.e., in a concrete and historically determinate situation that limits or conditions choice. Man is therefore called Dasein (“there being”) because he is defined by the fact that he exists, or is in the world and inhabits it....
  • Dasgupta, S. N. (Indian philosopher and historian)
    S.N. Dasgupta, a 20th-century Indian philosopher, has divided the history of Indian philosophy into three periods: the prelogical (up to the beginning of the Christian Era), the logical (from the beginning of the Christian Era up to the 11th century ad), and the ultralogical (from the 11th century to the 18th century). What Dasgupta calls the prelogical stage covers the pre-Mauryan a...
  • Dasgupta, Surendra Nath (Indian philosopher and historian)
    S.N. Dasgupta, a 20th-century Indian philosopher, has divided the history of Indian philosophy into three periods: the prelogical (up to the beginning of the Christian Era), the logical (from the beginning of the Christian Era up to the 11th century ad), and the ultralogical (from the 11th century to the 18th century). What Dasgupta calls the prelogical stage covers the pre-Mauryan a...
  • dash (punctuation)
    ...that clarification of syntax is the main object of punctuation. By the end of the 17th century the various marks had received their modern names, and the exclamation mark, quotation marks, and the dash had been added to the system....
  • dash (running)
    in athletics (track and field), a footrace over a short distance with an all-out or nearly all-out burst of speed, the chief distances being 100, 200, and 400 metres and 100, 220, and 440 yards....
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