Skip this Advertisement

A-Z Browse

  • pandanus (plant)
    any of some 600 tropical species of Old World trees and shrubs of the screw pine family, Pandanaceae. Pandanus trees typically have slender palmlike stems and produce from their trunks and stems aerial prop roots that are often huge; these, together with their terminal crowns of swordlike leaves, give the plants a distinctive appearance....
  • Pandanus (plant)
    any of some 600 tropical species of Old World trees and shrubs of the screw pine family, Pandanaceae. Pandanus trees typically have slender palmlike stems and produce from their trunks and stems aerial prop roots that are often huge; these, together with their terminal crowns of swordlike leaves, give the plants a distinctive appearance....
  • Pandanus candelabrum
    ...is heaviest in the south and typically becomes wooded savanna (grassy parkland) in central and northern Uganda. Where conditions are less favourable, dry acacia woodland, dotted with the occasional candelabra (tropical African shrubs or trees with huge spreading heads of foliage) and euphorbia (plants often resembling cacti and containing a milky juice) and interspersed with grassland, occurs.....
  • Pandanus veitchii (plant)
    ...milky-green leaves with white stripes; and D. sanderiana, the ribbon plant, a diminutive and slender, highly variegated species that can be grown in water. Similar in appearance is Pandanus veitchii, which has a rosette of leathery, sword-shaped leaves—glossy green and banded white—arranged in spirals....
  • Pandarus (Greek mythology)
    in Greek legend, son of Lycaon, a Lycian. In Homer’s Iliad, Book IV, Pandarus breaks the truce between the Trojans and the Greeks by treacherously wounding Menelaus, the king of Sparta; he is ultimately slain by the warrior Diomedes. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and William Shakespeare’s Tro...
  • Pāṇḍav (literature)
    ...to indigenous animistic festivals and worship of local spirits, some directly dramatizing episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, while the majority—the Pandawa (Pāṇḍav in Sanskrit) cycle of about 100 plays—are essentially Javanese creations in which the five heroic Pandawa brothers are placed in different situations.......
  • Pāṇḍavas (Hindu legend)
    in Hindu legend, the five sons of the dynastic hero Pāṇḍu who were victorious in the great epic war with their cousins, the Kauravas. See Mahābhārata....
  • Pandawa play (literature)
    ...to indigenous animistic festivals and worship of local spirits, some directly dramatizing episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, while the majority—the Pandawa (Pāṇḍav in Sanskrit) cycle of about 100 plays—are essentially Javanese creations in which the five heroic Pandawa brothers are placed in different situations.......
  • Panday, Basdeo (prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago)
    ...the United National Congress (UNC), which was supported chiefly by Indo-Trinidadians; the two Tobago seats went to the NAR, led by Robinson. The latter gave his support to the UNC, whose leader, Basdeo Panday, thus became prime minister. Panday was the first Indo-Trinidadian prime minister, and his government was the first in Trinidad and Tobago to be controlled by a party whose electoral......
  • pandean pipes (musical instrument)
    wind instrument consisting of cane pipes of different lengths tied in a row or in a bundle held together by wax or cord (metal, clay, wood, and plastic instruments are also made) and generally closed at the bottom. They are blown across the top, each providing a different note. The panpipe was widespread in Neolithic and later cultures, especially in Melanesia and pre-Columbian South America....
  • Pandectae (Roman law digest)
    collection of passages from the writings of Roman jurists, arranged in 50 books and subdivided into titles according to the subject matter. In ad 530 the Roman emperor Justinian entrusted its compilation to the jurist Tribonian with instructions to appoint a commission to help him. The Pandects were published in ad 533 and given statutory force (see also ...
  • Pandectarum sive Partitionum universalium Conradi Gesneri…libri xxi (work by Gesner)
    ...with the titles of their works, annotations, evaluations, and comments on the nature and merit of each entry. This monumental reference was followed in 1548 by the encyclopaedic work Pandectarum sive Partitionum universalium Conradi Gesneri . . . libri xxi, in which Gesner attempted to survey the recorded knowledge of the world under 21 headings. The first 19 books were......
  • Pandectists (philosophical school)
    Liberal conceptions of property seem to have influenced legal thought later in the 19th century. On the Continent the pandectists, a group of systematic jurists prominent in Germany, took the agglomerative tendency inherent in the Roman conception of property and developed it to a point that most modern commentators find goes far beyond what the Roman sources themselves suggest. Their ideas......
  • Pandects (Roman law digest)
    collection of passages from the writings of Roman jurists, arranged in 50 books and subdivided into titles according to the subject matter. In ad 530 the Roman emperor Justinian entrusted its compilation to the jurist Tribonian with instructions to appoint a commission to help him. The Pandects were published in ad 533 and given statutory force (see also ...
  • pandemic (medicine)
    Cholera became a disease of global importance in 1817. In that year a particularly lethal outbreak occurred in Jessore, India, midway between Calcutta and Dhaka (now in Bangladesh), and then spread throughout most of India, Burma (now Myanmar), and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). By 1820 epidemics had been reported in Siam (Thailand), in Indonesia (where more than 100,000 people succumbed on the island......
  • Pandemos (Greek mythology)
    ancient Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty, identified with Venus by the Romans. The Greek word aphros means “foam,” and Hesiod relates in his Theogony that Aphrodite was born from the white foam produced by the severed genitals of Uranus (Heaven), after his son Cronus threw them into the sea. Aphrodite was, i...
  • Pander, Christian Heinrich (German anatomist)
    ...described by various workers, notably the German-trained comparative embryologist Karl von Baer, who was the first to observe a mammalian egg within an ovary. Another German-trained embryologist, Christian Heinrich Pander, introduced in 1817 the concept of germ, or primordial, tissue layers into embryology....
  • Panderma (Turkey)
    port and town, northwestern Turkey, on the Sea of Marmara. It was used in the 13th century by the Latin crusaders as a base of operation against the Greeks of Asia Minor and was taken by the Ottomans in the next century. Its protected harbour is now an active transit port between Istanbul and İzmir. A commercial centre, it exports the varied products of the hinterland, in...
  • Panderma rug
    any of several types of floor coverings handwoven at Panderma (now Bandırma), a town in Turkey on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmora, usually as imitations of Ghiordes prayer-rug designs. The enterprise was begun early in the 20th century, perhaps with weavers from Ghiordes, though it is usually described as an Armenian establishment....
  • pandermite (mineral)
    an earthy, white borate mineral, hydrated calcium borate (Ca4B10O19·7H2O). It has been found as masses and nodules in a hot-spring deposit near Chetco, Ore., U.S.; as nodules in shale in Death Valley, Calif., U.S.; and as very large masses (weighing up to a ton) underlying gypsum and clay beds at Susurluk in northwestern Turk...
  • Pandharpur (India)
    town, southern Mahārāshtra state, western India. It lies along the Bhīma River, west of Sholāpur city. Easily reached by road and rail, it is a religious town visited throughout the year by thousands of Hindu pilgrims. Four major annual festivals are held in the town in honour...
  • pandiatonicism (music)
    Similar in a sense to Stravinsky’s pandiatonicism, or use of diatonic chords without the limitations of classical harmonic function, is the tendency toward polytonality in the works of the post-World War I group of French composers known as “Les Six.” These composers, notably Darius Milhaud, worked for a time with simple, diatonic chords piled upon each other in a way that sug...
  • Pandinus imperator (arachnid)
    ...an average size of about 6 cm (2.5 inches). Scorpions exhibit few sexual differences, although males usually are more slender and have longer tails than females. Giants among scorpions include the black emperor scorpion (Pandinus imperator), an African species found in Guinea, which attains a body length of about 18 cm (7 inches) and a mass of 60 grams (more than 2....
  • Pandion haliaetus (bird)
    large, long-winged hawk, about 65 cm (26 inches) long, that lives along seacoasts and larger interior waterways, where it catches fish. It is brown above and white below, with some white on the head....
  • Pandionidae (bird)
    The osprey is the only species in the family Pandionidae, which is sometimes considered a subfamily (Pandioninae) of the hawk and eagle family, Accipitridae, of the order Falconiformes....
  • Pandit, Kulbhushan Nath (Indian actor)
    (KULBHUSHAN NATH PANDIT), Indian motion picture actor whose elegant delivery of dialogue graced more than 60 films in some 40 years and helped make him a cult figure among college youths (b. Oct. 8, 1927?--d. July 3, 1996)....
  • Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi (Indian politician and diplomat)
    Indian political leader and diplomat, one of the world’s leading women in public life in the 20th century....
  • Paṇḍitārādhya Caritra (poem by Pālkuriki Sōmanātha)
    ...saints were Telugu Śaiva poets such as Pālkuriki Sōmanātha, who composed the Basavapurāṇam employing popular metres and idiomatic Telugu. His Paṇḍitārādhya Caritra is a life of the Śaiva devotee Paṇḍitārādhya as well as a book of general knowledge including social customs,......
  • Pandji (Javanese literature)
    ...was created in the mid-18th century from a confluence of three previously separate elements: female court dance, the lakon nok drama, and the Javanese Pandji stories as subject matter. Romantic episodes from the long Pandji tale were ideal for staging in the elegant and delicate style of female court dance, accompanied by songs......
  • Pandokrator Mountain (mountain, Corfu, Greece)
    ...(593 square km). Of limestone structure, the island is mountainous in the north and low in the south. Its northeastern protrusion, close to the Albanian coast, trends east-west and reaches a peak in Pandokrator Mountain (2,972 feet [906 m]); the other range, in the island’s centre, is lower....
  • Pandolfi, Vito (Italian critic, theatrical scholar, and director)
    Italian critic, theatrical scholar, and director known for his adherence to traditional forms of Italian drama....
  • Pandolpho (Italian-English churchman)
    papal legate to England and bishop of Norwich who was deeply involved in English secular politics....
  • Pandora (Greek mythology)
    in Greek mythology, the first woman. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, after Prometheus, a fire god and divine trickster, had stolen fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mortals, Zeus, the king of the gods, determined to counteract this blessing. He accordingly commissioned Hephaestus (a god of fire and patron ...
  • Pandora (astronomy)
    Pandora and its nearest neighbour moon, Prometheus, have been dubbed shepherd moons because of their influence on ring particles. During Voyager 1’s flyby, the two bodies were discovered orbiting on either side of the narrow F ring, which itself had been found only a year earlier by Pioneer 11. The moons’ gravitational interactions with the F......
  • Pandora’s Box (film by Pabst)
    ...conditions and the individual. Outstanding are Abwege (1928; Crisis), Die Büchse der Pandora (1929; Pandora’s Box), and Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1929; Diary of a Lost Girl). The last two films are particularly notable for the.....
  • Pandora’s Box (work by Wedekind)
    ...adolescents. In the Lulu plays, Erdgeist (1895; Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904; Pandora’s Box), he extended the theme of sex to the underworld of society and introduced the eternal, amoral femme fatale Lulu, who is destroyed in the tragic conflict of sexual freedom w...
  • Pandosto (work by Greene)
    ...pastorals in the manner of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, interspersed with charming, often irrelevant lyrics that have given Greene a reputation as a poet. The best of his pastorals is Pandosto (1588), the direct source of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale....
  • pandourion (musical instrument)
    ...Turkic-speaking countries of Central Asia. Kyrgyz folk singers still recite the lengthy verse epic Manas and other heroic and lyric poetry, often to the accompaniment of the three-stringed komuz, which is plucked like a lute....
  • Pandrosos (Greek mythology)
    ...related that Aglauros was turned to stone by the god Mercury in retribution for her attempt to frustrate his abduction of Herse, Aglauros’ youngest sister. Aglauros and her sisters (Herse and Pandrosos) were apparently at first fertility deities. Aglauros had a sanctuary on the Acropolis in which young men of military age swore an oath to her as well as to Zeus and to other deities. The....
  • Pandu (Hindu legendary figure)
    The story begins when the blindness of Dhritarashtra, the elder of two princes, causes him to be passed over in favour of his brother Pandu as king on their father’s death. A curse prevents Pandu from fathering children, however, and his wife Kunti asks the gods to father children in Pandu’s name. As a result, Dharma fathers Yudhishtira, the Wind fathers Bhima, Indra fathers Arjuna, ...
  • Pandua (ancient town, India)
    ...confluence of the Mahānanda and Kālindri rivers and is part of the English Bāzār urban agglomeration. The town rose to prominence as the river port of the Hindu capital of Pandua. During the 18th century it was the seat of prosperous cotton and silk industries. It remains an important distributing centre for rice, jute, and wheat. Historical monuments include the......
  • Pandukkabhaya (Sri Lankan king)
    Tradition attributes the founding of the kingdom of Anuradhapura to Pandukkabhaya, the third king of the Vijaya dynasty. With its growth as the strongest Sinhalese kingdom, the city of Anuradhapura and the nearby settlements flourished. Kings built up the city and developed it for urban life as they extended royal control over villages and outlying settlements. With the establishment of strong......
  • Pandulf (Italian-English churchman)
    papal legate to England and bishop of Norwich who was deeply involved in English secular politics....
  • Pandulf I (count of Capua)
    ...Capua, Atenulf I, conquered Benevento, and the Lombard-Byzantine border stabilized. Capua-Benevento maintained a certain cohesion under a single dynasty until the 980s, its most notable prince being Pandulf I (Ironhead; 961–981)....
  • Pandulph (Italian-English churchman)
    papal legate to England and bishop of Norwich who was deeply involved in English secular politics....
  • Panduro, Leif (Danish writer)
    Danish novelist and dramatist, a social critic who wrote in a satirical, humorous vein....
  • Panduvasudeva (Sri Lankan king)
    ...founded a dynasty. He had no heir to the throne, and toward the end of his reign he sent for his younger brother at Sinhapura. The brother, unwilling to leave his native land, sent his youngest son, Panduvasudeva, to Sri Lanka. Panduvasudeva landed with 32 followers at Gokanna (now Trincomalee) on the east coast. He was enthroned at Upatissagama and continued the Vijaya dynasty....
  • Pandya dynasty (Indian dynasty)
    Tamil rulers in the extreme south of India of unknown antiquity (they are mentioned by Greek authors in the 4th century bc). The Roman emperor Julian received an embassy from a Pāṇḍya about ad 361. The dynasty revived under Kaḍungōn in the early 7th century ad and ruled from Madura or farther south until the 16th century...
  • Pane e vino (work by Papini)
    ...in which he had been reared. A number of religious works followed, notably Storia di Cristo (1921; The Story of Christ), a vivid and realistic re-creation of the life of Jesus; Pane e vino (1926; “Bread and Wine”), a volume of religious poetry; and Sant’Agostino (1929; St. Augustine)....
  • “Pane e vino” (work by Silone)
    ...village, brutally suppressed as they attempt to obtain their rights. Fontamara became an international sensation and was translated into 14 languages. Later novels, Pane e vino (Bread and Wine, both 1937; revised as Vino e pane, 1955) and Il seme sotto la neve (1940; The Seed Beneath the Snow, 1942), portray socialist heroes who try to help the......
  • panegyreis (Greek religion)
    in Greek religion, an ancient assembly that met on certain fixed dates for the purpose of honouring a specific god. The gatherings varied in size from the inhabitants of a single town to great national meetings, such as the Olympic Games. The religious aspect of the meetings was by far the most important and included prayers, feasts, and processions. The populace, however, was probably more attra...
  • panegyric (rhetoric)
    eulogistic oration or laudatory discourse that originally was a speech delivered at an ancient Greek general assembly (panegyris), such as the Olympic and Panathenaic festivals. Speakers frequently took advantage of these occasions, when Greeks of various cities were gathered together, to advocate Hellenic unity. With this end in view and also in order to gratify their audience, they tended to ex...
  • Panegyric to Origen (work by Gregory Thaumaturgus)
    ...on the correct understanding of the Trinity. In this Dionysius of Alexandria is revealed as a faithful exponent of Origen’s pluralism and subordinationism. Gregory Thaumaturgus left a fascinating Panegyric to Origen, giving a graphic description of Origen’s method of instruction, as well as a dogmatically important Symbol and a Canonical Epistle that is in eff...
  • Panegyricus (speech by Isocrates)
    His other mainstay was Panhellenism, and this is what chiefly interests historians. In the “Panegyric” he developed the theme that many, notably Gorgias and the rhetorician Lysias, had recently argued: he called on Sparta to establish concord in Greece by recognizing the fitness and right of Athens to share with Sparta hegemony in Greece and by proceeding with the national crusade......
  • panegyris (Greek religion)
    in Greek religion, an ancient assembly that met on certain fixed dates for the purpose of honouring a specific god. The gatherings varied in size from the inhabitants of a single town to great national meetings, such as the Olympic Games. The religious aspect of the meetings was by far the most important and included prayers, feasts, and processions. The populace, however, was probably more attra...
  • panegyry (Greek religion)
    in Greek religion, an ancient assembly that met on certain fixed dates for the purpose of honouring a specific god. The gatherings varied in size from the inhabitants of a single town to great national meetings, such as the Olympic Games. The religious aspect of the meetings was by far the most important and included prayers, feasts, and processions. The populace, however, was probably more attra...
  • panel (construction)
    Another type of curtain wall is the panel type. It has no gridwork of mullions and muntins but is made of large prefabricated rigid panels connected to the floors and spanning between them, with transparent openings made as holes cut out of the panel. The panels can be made of precast concrete, aluminum, or steel, often in sandwich form; elastomeric sealants are used to close the joints....
  • panel caving
    ...of the methods described above (e.g., blasthole stoping, sublevel caving) can be applied to the extraction of massive deposits, but the method specifically developed for such deposits is called panel/block caving. It is used under the following conditions: (1) large ore bodies of steep dip, (2) massive ore bodies of large vertical extension, (3) rock that will cave and break into manageable......
  • panel chair (furniture)
    chair, usually made of oak, and named for the fine grade of oak usually used for wainscot paneling. Like many terms used in reference to furniture, it has a general and a particular meaning. The general sense is any heavy wooden chair of fairly simple construction. The more specific reference is to a wooden chair with turned (shaped on a lathe) front legs, square-sectioned back legs, arm supports,...
  • panel entry (mining)
    ...usually serve the life of the mine for ventilation and for worker and material transport. Submain entries can be regarded as feeders from the mains that subdivide each major area. From the submains, panel entries take off to subdivide further a block of coal into panels for orderly coal extraction....
  • panel haulage (mining)
    ...the surface, is a major factor in underground-mine efficiency. It can be considered in three stages: face or section haulage, which transfers the coal from the active working faces; intermediate or panel haulage, which transfers the coal onto the primary or main haulage; and the main haulage system, which removes the coal from the mine. The fundamental difference between face, intermediate, and...
  • panel heating
    Another common heating system is the radiant hot-water type. The heat source is applied to a small boiler, in which water is heated and from which it is circulated by an electric pump in insulated copper pipes similar to a domestic hot-water system. The pipes can be connected to cast-iron or finned tube steel radiators within the living spaces. The radiators are placed near the areas of......
  • Panel of the Infante (work by Goncalves)
    The polyptych for São Vicente (now in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon) consists of six panels, two large and four narrow ones, dominated by the figure of St. Vincent. In the large “Panel of the Infante” the saint is shown being venerated by a group of notables, among them Afonso V. In the other large “Panel of the Archbishop” he is surrounded by clergy....
  • panel painting (art)
    painting executed on a rigid support—ordinarily wood or metal—as distinct from painting done on canvas. Before canvas came into general use at the end of the 16th century, the panel was the support most often used for easel painting. A variety of woods has been used, including beech, cedar, chestnut, fir, larch, linden, white poplar, mahogany, o...
  • panel show (radio)
    Another pattern popular in many countries involves a panel of distinguished figures under a chairman, answering questions of a topical nature from members of a studio audience. In some cases a parabolic microphone is employed so that questions may be asked from any part of the studio or hall in which the program is mounted; others may call for written queries in advance so that questioners can......
  • panel wall
    ...under load-bearing walls. This type of wall is used to close in a steel or concrete frame building. It is usually carried by supports, normally steel shelf angles at each floor, and is called a panel wall. When the wall is supported at the base only, it is called a curtain wall....
  • panel-block caving
    ...of the methods described above (e.g., blasthole stoping, sublevel caving) can be applied to the extraction of massive deposits, but the method specifically developed for such deposits is called panel/block caving. It is used under the following conditions: (1) large ore bodies of steep dip, (2) massive ore bodies of large vertical extension, (3) rock that will cave and break into manageable......
  • panelák (building)
    ...part, stabilized. Although about half of existing housing was constructed between 1950 and 1990—much of it prefabricated high-rise urban apartment buildings known as paneláks, referring to the panel blocks used in construction—the general condition of Czech housing is relatively good in comparison with many other countries of the former...
  • paneling (interior design)
    in architecture and design, decorative treatment of walls, ceilings, doors, and furniture consisting of a series of wide, thin sheets of wood, called panels, framed together by narrower, thicker strips of wood. The latter are called styles (the external vertical strips), muntins (the internal vertical strips), and rails (the horizontal strips)....
  • panelling (interior design)
    in architecture and design, decorative treatment of walls, ceilings, doors, and furniture consisting of a series of wide, thin sheets of wood, called panels, framed together by narrower, thicker strips of wood. The latter are called styles (the external vertical strips), muntins (the internal vertical strips), and rails (the horizontal strips)....
  • Panellinio Apeleutherotiko Kinima (political party, Greece)
    ...After a period of imprisonment, he had been allowed to leave Greece. In exile he was a leading critic of the military regime and sought with limited success to launch a resistance movement, the Panhellenic Liberation Movement (Panellinio Apeleutherotiko Kinima; PAK), to bring about the overthrow of the military regime. PAK members formed a significant element in the newly established......
  • Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima (political party, Greece)
    social democratic political party in Greece. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) was founded in 1974 as a radical Marxist-inspired party that called for the dissolution of the country’s military alliances and for tighter government regulation of the economy, but since its founding it has transformed into a mainstream social democratic party. PASOK and New Democracy...
  • panengah (language style)
    ...to the Javanese pattern, though often mixed with elements of Hindu origin. The Sundanese language, like Javanese, has status styles: kasar (informal), halus (deferential), and panengah (a middle style)....
  • panentheism
    ...the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a part though not the whole of his being....
  • Paneth, Friedrich Adolf (Austrian chemist)
    Austrian chemist who with George Charles de Hevesy introduced radioactive tracer techniques (1912–13)....
  • Panethnikon (painting by Levine)
    ...Gangster Funeral (1952–53), The Patriarch of Moscow on a Visit to Jerusalem (1975), and a triptych, Panethnikon (1978), that depicts an imaginary meeting of the United Nations Security Council, he continued in the vein of biting social satire. Technically, these works reflect the dramatic......
  • Paneth’s cell (anatomy)
    specialized type of epithelial cell found in the mucous-membrane lining of the small intestine and of the appendix, at the base of tubelike depressions known as Lieberkühn glands. Named for the 19th-century Austrian physiologist Joseph Paneth, the cell has one nucleus at its base and densely packed secretory granules throughout the rest of its body. The cells’ function is not totall...
  • Panevėžys (Lithuania)
    city, north-central Lithuania, on the Nevėžis River. First mentioned in 1503, it was chartered as a district town in 1842 and became a regional economic centre....
  • Pang Xun (Chinese rebel)
    ...which later spread to Sichuan and dragged on from 858 until 866. After the invaders had been suppressed, part of the garrison force that had been sent to Lingnan mutinied and, under its leader, Pang Xun, fought and plundered its way back to Henan, where it caused widespread havoc in 868 and 869, cutting the canal linking the capital to the loyal Yangtze and Huai provinces. In 870 war broke......
  • pang-tzu ch’iang (musical form)
    ...between lines of classical poetry in order to explain them. Such lines were often sung. Still another Ming music-drama genre of considerable influence in the myriad regional forms is the clapper opera (pang-tzu ch’iang). In addition to the rhythmic importance of the clappers, the instrumental accompaniment of this form is noted for its emphasis on strings, the principal form......
  • Pangaea (supercontinent)
    in early geologic time, a “supercontinent” that incorporated almost all of Earth’s landmasses and covered nearly one-third of Earth’s surface. It was surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa. Pangea was fully assembled by the Early Permian Period, some 270 million years ago. It began to break apart about 200 million years ago, during the Early ...
  • Pangaeos, Mount (mountain, Greece)
    mountain, at the mouth of the Struma River, northeastern Kaválla nomós (department), Macedonia, Greece. Its highest point is 6,417 feet (1,956 m). The upper slopes are formed by fracturing of marble rock; gold and silver mineral deposits are found at lower elevations. It is rich in forest and streams and is surrounded by the fertile alluvial plain of the Struma, on which crops...
  • Pangaeum, Mount (mountain, Greece)
    mountain, at the mouth of the Struma River, northeastern Kaválla nomós (department), Macedonia, Greece. Its highest point is 6,417 feet (1,956 m). The upper slopes are formed by fracturing of marble rock; gold and silver mineral deposits are found at lower elevations. It is rich in forest and streams and is surrounded by the fertile alluvial plain of the Struma, on which crops...
  • Pangaion, Mount (mountain, Greece)
    mountain, at the mouth of the Struma River, northeastern Kaválla nomós (department), Macedonia, Greece. Its highest point is 6,417 feet (1,956 m). The upper slopes are formed by fracturing of marble rock; gold and silver mineral deposits are found at lower elevations. It is rich in forest and streams and is surrounded by the fertile alluvial plain of the Struma, on which crops...
  • Pangaíon Óros (mountain, Greece)
    mountain, at the mouth of the Struma River, northeastern Kaválla nomós (department), Macedonia, Greece. Its highest point is 6,417 feet (1,956 m). The upper slopes are formed by fracturing of marble rock; gold and silver mineral deposits are found at lower elevations. It is rich in forest and streams and is surrounded by the fertile alluvial plain of the Struma, on which crops...
  • Pangaios, Mount (mountain, Greece)
    mountain, at the mouth of the Struma River, northeastern Kaválla nomós (department), Macedonia, Greece. Its highest point is 6,417 feet (1,956 m). The upper slopes are formed by fracturing of marble rock; gold and silver mineral deposits are found at lower elevations. It is rich in forest and streams and is surrounded by the fertile alluvial plain of the Struma, on which crops...
  • Pangalanes Canal (Madagascar)
    The coastal strip has an average width of 30 miles. It is a narrow alluvial plain that terminates in a low coastline bordered with lagoons linked together by the Pangalanes (Ampangalana) Canal, which is some 400 miles long. To the south of Farafangana the coast becomes rocky, and in the southeast there occur many little bays. To the northeast is the deep Bay of Antongil (Antongila)....
  • Pangalos, Theodoros (Greek statesman)
    soldier and statesman who for eight months in 1926 was dictator of Greece....
  • Pangani (Tanzania)
    historic town, northeastern Tanzania. It lies at the mouth of the Pangani River, on the Pemba Channel of the Indian Ocean. The town was formerly a slave-trading depot at the terminus of Arab caravan routes from the interior. It is now an important commercial centre, producing sisal, corn (maize), bananas, and cassava. Pop. (1978 prelim.) 5,368....
  • Pangasinan (people)
    eighth largest cultural-linguistic group of the Philippines. Numbering about 1,540,000 in the late 20th century, the Pangasinan occupy the west-central area of the island of Luzon. They are predominantly Roman Catholic. There has been considerable intermarriage with the Ilocanos from northern Luzon, an adjacent cultural-linguistic group with whom they share many traditions. The...
  • Pangasinan language
    Major Austronesian languages include Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilokano, Hiligaynon, Bikol, Waray, Kapampangan, and Pangasinan of the Philippines; Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Minangkabau, the Batak languages, Acehnese, Balinese, and Buginese of western Indonesia; and Malagasy of Madagascar. Each of these languages has more than one million speakers. Javanese alone accounts for about......
  • “Pange lingua” (work by Fortunatus)
    ...celebrating the installation of Agnes as abbess. Of his six poems on the subject of the Cross, two are splendid hymns in which the religious note finds its noblest expression: these poems, the Pange lingua and the Vexilla regis, have been translated into English by John Mason Neale as “Sing My Tongue the Glorious Battle” and “The Royal Banners Forward......
  • Pangea (supercontinent)
    in early geologic time, a “supercontinent” that incorporated almost all of Earth’s landmasses and covered nearly one-third of Earth’s surface. It was surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa. Pangea was fully assembled by the Early Permian Period, some 270 million years ago. It began to break apart about 200 million years ago, during the Early ...
  • pangenesis (science)
    ...inheritance” proposed that offspring merely struck an average between the characteristics of their parents. But as Darwin became aware, blending inheritance (including his own theory of “pangenesis,” in which each organ and tissue of an organism throws off tiny contributions of itself that are collected in the sex organs and determine the configuration of the offspring) cou...
  • Pangeon, Mount (mountain, Greece)
    mountain, at the mouth of the Struma River, northeastern Kaválla nomós (department), Macedonia, Greece. Its highest point is 6,417 feet (1,956 m). The upper slopes are formed by fracturing of marble rock; gold and silver mineral deposits are found at lower elevations. It is rich in forest and streams and is surrounded by the fertile alluvial plain of the Struma, on which crops...
  • Pangermanismus (German political movement)
    movement whose goal was the political unification of all people speaking German or a Germanic language. Some of its adherents favoured the unification of only the German-speaking people of central and eastern Europe and the Low Countries (Dutch and Flemish being regarded as Germanic dialects). The movement had its roots in the desire for German unification stimulated by the war ...
  • Pangio kuhlii (fish)
    ...fishes. Among these are the clown loach (Botia macracanthus), an orange fish about 13–30 centimetres (5–12 inches) long and marked with three vertical black bands, and the kuhli loach (Pangio kuhlii), a pinkish, eel-like species about 8 centimetres long, marked with many vertical black bands. Other loaches include the stone (Nemachilus barbatula) and......
  • Pangkalpinang (Indonesia)
    kotamadya (municipality) and chief settlement of Bangka island and capital of Bangka-Belitung propinsi (province), Indonesia, located in the east-central part of the island. It is a major port on the Java Sea and has an airport. The city’s population consists mostly of Hakka, originally from G...
  • Pangkor Engagement (British-Malayan treaty)
    (1874), treaty between the British government and Malay chiefs in Perak, the first step in the establishment of British dominion over the Malay states. In January 1874, Governor Andrew Clarke of the Straits Settlements, prompted by the local trading community, organized a meeting between British, Malay, and Chinese leaders to settle a Perak succession dispute and to stop warfar...
  • Pangnirtung (Canada)
    ...Passage. Blacklead Island, within the sound, was a noted whaling station by the late 19th century. The Anglican church established missions early in the 20th century at many settlements, including Pangnirtung (Panniqtuuq), on the northern shore of the sound. Now primarily a trading post and gateway to Auyuittuq National Park Reserve (8,394 square miles [21,470 square km]), Pangnirtung has a......
Skip this Advertisement

Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.

If you think a reference to this article on "" will enhance your Web site, blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article, and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.

You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.

copy link

We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.

Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.

The Britannica Store
A-Z Browse

Image preview