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Tale of the Fox, The (animation by Starewicz)
...The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912), in which a camera-wielding grasshopper uses the tools of his trade to humiliate his unfaithful wife, and the feature-length The Tale of the Fox (1930), based on German folktales as retold by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. A Russian working in France, Alexandre Alexeïeff, developed the pinscreen, a board...
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“Tale of the Heike, The” (Japanese epic)
medieval Japanese epic, which is to the Japanese what the Iliad is to the Western world—a prolific source of later dramas, ballads, and tales. It stems from unwritten traditional tales and variant texts composed between 1190 and 1221, which were gathered together (c. 1240), probably by a scholar named Yukinaga, to form a single text. Its poetic prose was int...
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Tale of the Three Guardsmen (Persian-Jewish story)
...of Israel’s history from 621 bc to 444 bc by summarizing II Chronicles 35:1–36:23, the whole of the canonical Book of Ezra, and Nehemiah 7:73–8:12. The only new material is the “Tale of the Three Guardsmen,” a Persian folk story that was slightly altered to fit a Jewish context....
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Tale of the Unextinguished Moon, The (work by Pilnyak)
...who depicted Soviet life most skillfully, he was regularly subjected to harsh criticism and persecution by Soviet censors. In 1926 he caused a scandal with his Povest nepogashennoy luny (The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon), a scarcely veiled account of the death of Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze, the famous military commander, during an operation. The issue of the magazine in which.....
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Tale of Two Cities, A (work by Dickens)
Tired and ailing though he was, he remained inventive and adventurous in his final novels. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) was an experiment, relying less than before on characterization, dialogue, and humour. An exciting and compact narrative, it lacks too many of his strengths to count among his major works. Sydney Carton’s self-sacrifice was found deeply moving by Dickens and by many....
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Tālebān (militia government, Afghanistan)
ultraconservative political and religious faction that emerged in Afghanistan in the mid 1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the collapse of Afghanistan’s communist regime, and the subsequent breakdown in civil order. The faction took its name from its membership, which consisted largely of students trained in madrasahs ...
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Taleban (militia government, Afghanistan)
ultraconservative political and religious faction that emerged in Afghanistan in the mid 1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the collapse of Afghanistan’s communist regime, and the subsequent breakdown in civil order. The faction took its name from its membership, which consisted largely of students trained in madrasahs ...
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Taleju Temple (temple, Kāthmāndu, Nepal)
...Destruction caused by an earthquake in 1934 resulted in the construction of many modern-style buildings. The city’s most notable building is the old palace of the Malla kings, which includes Taleju temple (1549), built by Raja Mahindra Malla. The palace’s main gate is guarded by a figure of the god Hanuman; in a small, adjoining square are several pagoda-style temples....
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Talence (France)
town, Gironde département, Aquitaine région, southern suburb of Bordeaux, southwestern France. It is a centre for jet-aircraft production and has light industry and wine making. An extension of Bordeaux University (now Bordeaux University I), with housing for 30,000 students, was erected there in the 1960s and has...
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Taleng Phai (work by Paramanuchit)
Paramanuchit’s masterpiece is the Taleng Phai (“The Defeat of the Mons”), the heroic epic of the struggle of King Naresvara of Ayutthaya to liberate his country from Myanmar (Burmese) rule and of his famous single combat with the crown prince of Myanmar in 1590. His concluding section of the Samuddhaghosa, a folktale adapted from a collection called the......
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Talensi (people)
a people of northern Ghana who speak a language of the Gur branch of the Niger-Congo language family. They grow millet and sorghum as staples and raise cattle, sheep, and goats on a small scale. Their normal domestic unit is the polygamous joint family of a man and his sons (and sometimes grandsons) with their wives and unmarried daughters. Married daughters live with their husbands in other commu...
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talent (psychology)
Genius is distinguished from talent, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Talent refers to a native aptitude for some special kind of work and implies a relatively quick and easy acquisition of a particular skill within a domain (sphere of activity or knowledge). Genius, on the other hand, involves originality, creativity, and the ability to think and work in areas not previously......
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talent (unit of weight)
unit of weight used by many ancient civilizations, such as the Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. The weight of a talent and its relationship to its major subdivision, the mina, varied considerably over time and location in the ancient world. The most common ratio of the talent to the mina was probably 1:60....
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Talented Mr. Ripley, The (film by Minghella)
...1990s, including Rounders (1998), Steven Spielberg’s World War II blockbuster Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). After several box-office disappointments, Damon starred in two film series that were hugely popular. He portrayed one of several con men who join ...
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Talented Tenth (educational concept)
(1903), concept espoused by black educator and author W.E.B. Du Bois, emphasizing the necessity for higher education to develop the leadership capacity among the most able 10 percent of black Americans. Du Bois was one of a number of black intellectuals who feared that what they saw as the overemphasis on industrial training (as evidenced, for example, by the plan proposed by ...
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taler (coin)
...centre for the Holy Roman Empire, the town reached its peak in the 16th century, when its mines were owned by the counts of Šlik (German: Schlik). The German monetary unit taler, or thaler, from which the English word dollar is derived, refers to the Joachimsthaler, a coin first minted in Jáchymov in 1517....
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Tales and Novels in Verse (work by La Fontaine)
Like his miscellaneous works, La Fontaine’s Contes et nouvelles en vers (Tales and Novels in Verse) considerably exceed the Fables in bulk. The first of them was published in 1664, the last posthumously. He borrowed them mostly from Italian sources, in particular Giovanni Boccaccio, but he preserved none of the 14th-century poet’s rich sense of reality. The essen...
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Tales by the O’Hara Family (work by John and Michael Banim)
...by journalism. In 1821 his blank verse tragedy, Damon and Pythias, was produced at Covent Garden; John married, moved to London, and continued to live by journalism. In 1825 there appeared Tales, by the O’Hara Family, written in collaboration with Michael, who had studied for the bar but had had to take over his father’s business. All three Tales—two by...
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Tales from My Hut (work by Philombe)
...the police and became their union secretary in Douala. In the mid-1950s, after he was permanently crippled by spinal disease, he began writing seriously. His Lettres de ma cambuse (1964; Tales from My Hut, 1977), which he had written in 1957, won the Prix Mottard of the Académie Française. His other published works include Sola, ma chérie (1966;......
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Tales from Ovid (work by Hughes)
...Hughes published a poetic chronicle of his much-speculated-upon relationship with Sylvia Plath, the American poet to whom he was married from 1956 until her suicide in 1963. With Tales from Ovid (1997) and his versions of Aeschylus’s Oresteia (1999) and Euripides’ Alcestis (1999), he looked back even furthe...
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Tales from Shakespear (work by C. Lamb and M.A. Lamb)
In 1807 Lamb and his sister published Tales from Shakespear, a retelling of the plays for children, and in 1809 they published Mrs. Leicester’s School, a collection of stories supposedly told by pupils of a school in Hertfordshire. In 1808 Charles published a children’s version of the Odyssey, called The Adventures of Ulysses....
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Tales from Two Pockets (work by Čapek)
...biography of him. The quest for justice inspired most of the stories in Povídky z jedné kapsy and Povídky z druhé kapsy (both 1929; published together as Tales from Two Pockets)....
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Tales of a Wayside Inn (work by Longfellow)
The Tales of a Wayside Inn, modeled roughly on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and published in 1863, reveals his narrative gift. The first poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” became a national favourite. Written in anapestic tetrameter meant to suggest the galloping of a horse, this folk ballad recalls a hero of the American Revolution and his famous “...
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Tales of Hoffmann, The (opera by Offenbach)
Without question, the most famous operatic specimen is the Barcarolle from Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. Chopin’s Barcarolle, Opus 60, is possibly the best known of the 19th-century instrumental compositions, although other 19th-century composers from Mendelssohn to Liszt and Gabriel Fauré contributed a host of similar pieces. Barcaroles for various perf...
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Tales of Hulan River (novel by Xiao Hong)
...also a writer. During an illness in 1940 she wrote the satirical novel Ma Bole. The same year, she moved to Hong Kong, where she finished writing Hulanhe zhuan (1942; Tales of Hulan River). With this semiautobiographical novel, her best-known work, she developed a new kind of “lyric-style fiction” that lies between fiction and nonfiction, pro...
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Tales of Ise (Japanese literary work)
The form has many subgenres. Uta monogatari (poem tales) are exemplified by the Ise monogatari (c. 980), consisting of 143 episodes, each containing one or more poems and a prose description of the circumstances of composition. Tsukuri monogatari (courtly romance) are exemplified by Murasaki Shikibu’s incomparable masterpiece, Genji monogatari (c. 1010). Perhaps ...
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“Tales of Jacob, The” (work by Mann)
The novels on which Mann was working throughout this period reflect variously the cultural crisis of his times. In 1933 he published The Tales of Jacob (U.S. title, Joseph and His Brothers), the first part of his four-part novel on the biblical Joseph, continued the following year in The Young Joseph and two years later with Joseph in Egypt, and completed with......
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Tales of Moonlight and Rain (work by Ueda Akinari)
...since his stepfather’s death (1761) burned down. He took that as his opportunity to devote his full time to writing. In 1776, after eight years of work, he produced Ugetsu monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain). These ghost tales showed a concern for literary style not present in most popular fiction of the time, in which the text was usually simply an accompaniment for t...
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Tales of Mother Goose (work by Perrault)
...as “Snow White,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “The Maiden in the Tower.” A later French collection, Charles Perrault’s Contes de ma mère l’oye (1697; Tales of Mother Goose), including “Cinderella,” “Little Red Ridinghood,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” remains faithful to the oral trad...
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Tales of the City (work by Maupin)
Maupin’s career as a fiction writer was launched when his Tales of the City was published as a serial in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976–77, then as a book in 1978. The story, set in San Francisco, focuses on three characters—Mary Ann Singleton, a naive young woman from Cleveland, Ohio; Michael (“Mouse”)....
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Tales of the South Pacific (work by Michener)
...a teacher and editor. He served as a naval historian in the South Pacific from 1944 to 1946, and his early fiction is set in this area. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for the collection Tales of the South Pacific (1947), which presented the world of the South Pacific as exotic and foreign yet still part of the brotherhood of man. The anthology was later adapted for the......
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Tales of the Tatras (work by Tetmajer)
...of the Romantic poet and playwright Juliusz Słowacki and of French and Belgian verse. Tetmajer’s collection of sketches and tales Na skalnym Podhalu (1903–10; Tales of the Tatras), written almost entirely in the local dialect, is considered his best work. Based in part on ancient legends of the Tatra Mountains area, these colourful stories describe...
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Taleyarkhan, Rusi (American nuclear engineer)
In 2002 Rusi Taleyarkhan and colleagues at Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind., claimed to have observed a statistically significant increase in nuclear emissions of products of fusion reactions (neutrons and tritium) during acoustic cavitation experiments with chilled deuterated (bombarded with deuterium) acetone. Their experimental setup was based on the known phenomenon of......
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Talha (Israel)
former settlement, now a national memorial, in Upper Galilee, northern Israel, near the Lebanese border. One of the first Jewish settlements in northern Palestine, it was intermittently inhabited from 1905, and permanently settled as a pastoral camp and border outpost in 1918. The name (Hebrew: “Hill of Life”) is an onomatopoetic derivation from the former Arabic n...
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Ṭalḥah ibn ʿUbaydullah (Companion of Muḥammad)
...opposition was directed against him. The Battle of the Camel (December 656), pitting the forces of ʿAlī against those of ʿĀʾishah, one of Muḥammad’s widows, and Ṭalḥah and az-Zubayr, prominent Companions of the Prophet, temporarily secured ʿAlī’s position but inaugurated civil war. Muʿāwiyah, anoth...
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talharpa (musical instrument)
...the ancient Icelandic fidla is a bowed zither, as is the Korean ajaeng; the Scandinavian talharpa is a bowed lyre. The musical saw is classified as a bowed idiophone....
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Talhouni, Bahjat al- (Jordanian politician)
Jordanian politician (b. 1913, Ma’an, vilayet of Syria, Ottoman Empire [now Ma’an, Jordan]--d. Jan. 30, 1994), was a loyal monarchist and close personal adviser to King Hussein of Jordan throughout a long career in public service; he was called upon to serve as prime minister four separate times between 1960 and 1970. Talhouni trained as a lawyer at the University of Damascus (LL.B.;...
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Taliabu (island, Indonesia)
chain of islands in western North Maluku propinsi (province), Indonesia. They lie east of central Celebes and between the Molucca Sea (north) and Banda Sea (south). Three large islands, Taliabu (the largest), Mangole, and Sanana (or Sulabesi), and several smaller ones make up the chain. The area of this group is about 1,875 square miles (4,850 square km). Taliabu and Mangole are......
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Taliaferro, Dorothy L. (American gay rights activist)
American gay rights activist who was in the forefront of the battle for lesbian and gay rights for more than 50 years. After a brief early marriage, she found that she was attracted to women. Martin and her partner, Phyllis Lyon, founded (1955) the first advocacy group for lesbians, Daughters of Bilitis, which grew to have chapters in several cities before it disbanded in 1970, and edited its news...
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Taliban (militia government, Afghanistan)
ultraconservative political and religious faction that emerged in Afghanistan in the mid 1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the collapse of Afghanistan’s communist regime, and the subsequent breakdown in civil order. The faction took its name from its membership, which consisted largely of students trained in madrasahs ...
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Taliesin (Welsh poet)
one of five poets renowned among the Welsh in the latter part of the 6th century, according to the Historia Brittonum (c. 830)....
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Taliesin and Taliesin West (homes and architectural schools)
the two homes, as well as architectural schools, of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Originally built in 1911, Taliesin, located near Spring Green, Wisconsin, U.S., was rebuilt after fires in 1914 and 1925. Taliesin West, near Scottsdale, Arizona, was begun in 1937 as a winter home for Wright and his students. Wright was of Welsh descent and named his homes after the W...
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Taligent, Inc. (American company)
...a technology agreement with Motorola, Inc., to develop a next-generation RISC (reduced-instruction-set computing) chip, known as the PowerPC, Apple and IBM created two new software companies, Taligent, Inc., and Kaleida Labs, Inc., for the development of operating system software. Taligent was expected to enable versions of both the Mac OS and the IBM OS/2 to run on a new computer......
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Tālikota, Battle of (Indian history)
(January 1565), confrontation between the forces of the Hindu raja of Vijayanagar and the four Muslim sultans of Bijāpur, Bīdar, Ahmadnagar, and Golconda in the Indian Deccan. The armies numbered several hundred thousand with large contingents of elephants. The battle seems to have been decided by the Muslim artillery and the capture and execution of the ruling Hin...
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Talimu He (river, China)
chief river of the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, extreme northwestern China. It lies immediately north of the Plateau of Tibet. The river gives its name to the great basin between the Tien Shan and Kunlun mountain systems of Central Asia. It flows for most of ...
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Talimu Pendi (basin, China)
chief river of the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, extreme northwestern China. It lies immediately north of the Plateau of Tibet. The river gives its name to the great basin between the Tien Shan and Kunlun mountain systems of Central Asia. It flows for most of its length through the Takla Makan Desert. The word tarim is used to designate the bank of......
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talion (law)
principle developed in early Babylonian law and present in both biblical and early Roman law that criminals should receive as punishment precisely those injuries and damages they had inflicted upon their victims. Many early societies applied this “eye-for-an-eye” principle literally....
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talipes calcaneovalgus (pathology)
...foot is turned inward and bent toward the heel. Correction usually involves the use of splints and plaster casts to force the foot into the correct position; severe cases may necessitate surgery. In talipes calcaneovalgus, the front part of the foot is bent upward and turned outward. This form of clubfoot generally results from mechanical pressure in the uterus having held the foot in an unusua...
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talipes equinovarus (pathology)
congenital twisting of the foot. In the most common type, called talipes equinovarus, the heel bends upward and the front part of the foot is turned inward and bent toward the heel. The frequency of the disorder is equal in males and females. A mild form, possibly caused by poor position in the womb, may be cured by the use of wrappings, plaster casts, and sometimes a special splint; treatment......
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talipot palm (plant)
The talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera) of tropical Sri Lanka and India may live as long as 75 years before it flowers and fruits just one time and then dies. The huge panicle (many-branched cluster) of creamy white blooms rises up to 5 metres (16 feet) from the centre of the cluster of fan-shaped leaves topping the trunk, which may be 24 metres (about 80 feet) tall and 90 to......
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taʿlīq script (calligraphy)
in Arabic calligraphy, cursive style of lettering developed in Iran in the 10th century. It is thought to have been the creation of Ḥasan ibn Ḥusayn ʿAlī of Fars, but, because Khwājah ʿAbd al-Malik Buk made such vast improvements, the invention is often attributed to him. The rounded forms and exaggerated horizontal strokes that characte...
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Talis Qualis (Swedish author)
...1850s was mainly an aftereffect of Romanticism. A movement known as Pan-Scandinavianism, which called for varying forms of political and cultural Scandinavian unity, produced a good deal of verse: Carl Vilhelm August Strandberg (pseudonym Talis Qualis), the fieriest poet of this type, later made excellent translations from British Romantic poet Lord Byron. Popular reading was provided by......
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Talish Mountains (mountains, Azerbaijan-Iran)
mountain chain, northwestern Iran, in the northwest section of the Elburz Mountains, extending southeastward from the Azerbaijan border to the lower part of the Safīd Rūd (Safid River). Few peaks rise above 10,000 ft (3,000 m). The humid subtropical coastal lowlands along the Caspian Sea lie at the eastern base of the mountains....
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Talishi (people)
...winter vegetables. The towns of Länkäran, Astara, and Masallı are small, and local industry is mostly concerned with the processing of agricultural goods, while in the mountains the Talysh people make colourful rugs and carpets....
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talisman (charm)
object bearing a sign or engraved character and thought to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune. See amulet....
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Talisman (novel by Scott)
...to Cairo, where the law was more lenient and where he acquired a reputation so high that he became physician to Saladin, the Saracen leader. (He was the original of El Hakim in Sir Walter Scott’s Talisman.) A few of his works, written in Hebrew, were eventually translated into Latin and printed....
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“Talisman, The” (painting by Sérusier)
...school, which centred on the Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. Under Gauguin’s direct guidance, Paul Sérusier, the group’s founder, painted the first Nabi work, The Swallow-Hole in the Bois d’Amour, Pont-Aven (1888; also called The Talisman), a small, near-abstract landscape composed of patches of simpl...
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ṭalit (Judaism)
prayer shawl worn by male Jews during the daily morning service (shaḥarit); it is also worn by the leader of the service during the afternoon service (minḥa). On Yom Kippur, males wear it for all five services and on Tisha be-Av only during the afternoon service....
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talithim (Judaism)
prayer shawl worn by male Jews during the daily morning service (shaḥarit); it is also worn by the leader of the service during the afternoon service (minḥa). On Yom Kippur, males wear it for all five services and on Tisha be-Av only during the afternoon service....
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Talitridae (crustacean)
any of several terrestrial crustaceans of the family Talitridae (order Amphipoda) that are notable for their hopping ability. The European sand flea (Talitrus saltator), which is about 1.5 centimetres (0.6 inch) long, lives on sand beaches near the high-tide mark, remaining buried in the sand during daytime and emerging at night to forage for food. Like other sand fleas, ...
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Talitrus longicornis (crustacean)
The long-horned sand flea (T. longicornis), which is found on the Atlantic coast of North America from New England to the Gulf of Mexico, is named for its antennae, which are as long as the body. It grows to 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) long, and is waxy white. In habit it resembles T. saltator....
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Talitrus saltator (crustacean)
any of several terrestrial crustaceans of the family Talitridae (order Amphipoda) that are notable for their hopping ability. The European sand flea (Talitrus saltator), which is about 1.5 centimetres (0.6 inch) long, lives on sand beaches near the high-tide mark, remaining buried in the sand during daytime and emerging at night to forage for food. Like other sand fleas, it feeds on......
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Tälje (Sweden)
town, in the län (county) of Stockholm, east-central Sweden. It lies between a bay of Lake Mälar and the Baltic Sea, southwest of Stockholm. The town, formerly called simply Tälje, was founded in the 10th century and was damaged by fire in 1390, 1650, and 1719. In and around the town are St. Ragnhild’s Church (dating from about 1200), Gripsholm...
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Talk (American magazine)
...receipts of more than $1 billion—Weinstein began to position the company as an entertainment empire. A television division was launched in 1998, and the following year Talk magazine, a joint venture with Hearst Publishing, hit the newsstands. In 2000 Talk Miramax Books was established. As the new ventures struggled, however, some believed that the diversion...
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talk poem (poetry)
American poet, translator, and art critic who became best known for his improvisational “talk poems,” first published in Talking (1972), which blend lighthearted storytelling and comedy with social commentary....
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talk show (broadcasting)
What explains the remarkable longevity and popularity of television talk shows? There is no one answer. The basic ingredients of a typical talk show are, obviously (1) the host and (2) his or her guests. There’s nothing particularly mysterious about the popularity of the latter factor—people, especially Americans, have long been fascinated by military leaders, film stars, singers,......
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Talk to Her (film by Almodóvar)
...Matador (1986), which was roundly criticized in Spain for its negative portrayal of the corrida, and Hable con ella (2002; Talk to Her), which deals with, among other things, the relationship between a female bullfighter and her lover. In art as in society, bullfighting’s “dance with death” sparks......
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Talk to the Animals (song by Bricusse)
...Music Score: Elmer Bernstein for Thoroughly Modern MillieScoring of Music Adaptation or Treatment: Ken Darby and Alfred Newman for CamelotSong Original for the Picture: “Talk to the Animals” from Doctor Dolittle; music and lyrics by Leslie BricusseHonorary Award: Arthur Freed...
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Talkeetna Mountains (mountains, Alaska, United States)
Between the Alaska Range and the coastal ranges lie the Talkeetna Mountains and, to the east of them, the Wrangell Mountains. The Talkeetnas occupy a rugged oval area about 100 miles from north to south and 70 miles from east to west. They consist of a compact group of radial ridges averaging from 6,000 to 8,800 feet in elevation. There are only a few low passes. The higher ridges are......
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talkie (motion picture)
The pre-World War II sound era...
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Talking (work by Antin)
American poet, translator, and art critic who became best known for his improvisational “talk poems,” first published in Talking (1972), which blend lighthearted storytelling and comedy with social commentary....
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talking catfish
...of Africa can generate up to 450 volts of electricity; the parasitic catfish, or candiru (Vandellia cirrhosa), of South America sometimes invades the urogenital openings of bathers; the talking catfish (Acanthodoras spinosissimus) is an armoured, Amazonian species that makes grunting sounds; the upside-down catfishes (Synodontis batensoda and others) of the family......
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talking drum
any of various types of drums that, by imitating the rhythm and the rise and fall of words in languages, are used as communication devices. Such drums occur in East and West Africa, Melanesia, and Southeast Asia....
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Talking Heads (teleplay by Bennett)
...the two World Wars. His masterpieces, though, are dramatic monologues written for television—A Woman of No Importance (1982) and 12 works he called Talking Heads (1987) and Talking Heads 2 (1998). In these television plays, Bennett’s comic genius for capturing the rich waywardness of everyday speech combine...
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Talking Heads (American rock group)
American art rock band popular in the late 1970s and ’80s. Band members were David Byrne (b. May 14, 1952Dumbarton, Scot.), Chris Frantz (b. May 8, 1951Fort Campbell, Ky., U.S....
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Talks of Instruction (work by Eckhart)
Eckhart wrote four works in German that are usually called “treatises.” At about the age of 40 he wrote the Talks of Instruction, on self-denial, the nobility of will and intellect, and obedience to God. In the same period, he faced the Franciscans in some famous disputations on theological issues. In 1303 he became provincial (leader) of the Dominicans in Saxony, and......
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tall (mound)
(“hill” or “small elevation”), in Middle Eastern archaeology, a raised mound marking the site of an ancient city. For specific sites, see under substantive word (e.g., Ḥasi, Tel)....
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Tall ad-Dabaʾa (ancient city, Egypt)
ancient Egyptian capital in the 15th, 19th, and 20th dynasties. Situated in the northeastern delta about 62 miles (100 km) northeast of Cairo, the city lay in ancient times on the Bubastite branch of the Nile....
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Tall al-Maskhūṭah (Egypt)
Ancient ruins have been discovered at Tall al-Maskhūṭah, about 10 miles (16 km) west of Ismailia on the Al-Ismāʿīliyyah Canal. Some scholars identify them with biblical Pithom, a site of pharaonic storehouses built by the Hebrews under Egyptian bondage (Exodus 1:11). Other scholars identify the site with biblical Succoth, the Israelites’ first halt in the ...
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Tall al-Uhaimer (ancient city, Iraq)
ancient Mesopotamian city-state located east of Babylon in what is now south-central Iraq. According to ancient Sumerian sources it was the seat of the first postdiluvian dynasty; most scholars believe that the dynasty was at least partly historical. A king of Kish, Mesilim, is known to have been the author of the earliest extant royal inscription, in which he recorded his arbit...
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Tall al-Warkāʾ (ancient city, Iraq)
ancient Mesopotamian city located northwest of Ur (Tall Al-Muqayyar) in southeastern Iraq. The site has been excavated from 1928 onward by the German Oriental Society and the German Archeological Institute. Erech was one of the greatest cities of Sumer and was enclosed by brickwork walls about 6 miles (10 km) in circumference, which according to legend were built by the mythical hero Gilg...
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Tall an-Nabī Mind (ancient city, Syria)
ancient city on the Orontes (Al-ʿĀṣī) River in western Syria. The site is located about 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Ḥimṣ. It was the site of two battles in ancient times....
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Tall As-Sulṭān (town in the West Bank)
town located in the West Bank. Jericho is one of the earliest continuous settlements in the world, dating perhaps from about 9000 bce. Archaeological excavations have demonstrated Jericho’s lengthy history. The city’s site is of great archaeological importance; it provides evidence of the first development of permanent settlements and thus of the firs...
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Tall Ash-Shaykh Madhkūr (ancient city, Israel)
ancient city and modern development region, in the upper part of Ha-Shefela, central Israel. The mound of Tel ʿAdullam, or H̱orbat (“Ruins of”) ʿAdullam (Arabic: Tall Ash-Shaykh Madhkūr), 22.5 miles (36 km) southwest of Jerusalem, is generally accepted as the site of the ancient city. The earliest reference to ʿAdullam is in the book of Genesis, wh...
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Tall, At- (archaeological site, Middle East)
...Ai (Hebrew: ha-ʿAy, “The Ruin”) just east of Bethel (modern Baytīn in the West Bank). This would make it identical with the large early Bronze Age site now called At-Tall. Excavations there in 1933–35 by a French expedition uncovered a large temple and other remains of the 3rd millennium bc. That occupation ended about 2500 bc...
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Tall Basṭah (ancient city, Egypt)
ancient Egyptian city in the Nile River delta north of Cairo. It became important when the pharaohs of the 19th dynasty (1292–1190 bce) moved their capital from Thebes to the delta, and it reached its peak of prosperity when its prince, Sheshonk I...
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Tall Bayt Mirsham (ancient city, West Bank)
ancient town of Palestine, located near Hebron in the West Bank. According to the Bible, the town was taken from the Canaanites either by Caleb’s son-in-law Othniel or by Joshua himself. Tall Bayt Mirsham (Tell Beit Mirsim) was excavated (1926–32) by W.F. Albright, who uncovered exceptionally clear stratifica...
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tall bellflower
Tall bellflower (Campanula americana), native to moist woodlands of North America, has flowering spikes that may reach 2 m (6 feet) high and has saucer-shaped flowers with long, curved styles. Tussock bellflower, or Carpathian harebell (C. carpatica), with lavender to white, bowl-shaped, long-stalked flowers, several to the stem, has many forms. The plants, 15 to 25 cm (6 to 10......
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tall bluebell
Tall bellflower (Campanula americana), native to moist woodlands of North America, has flowering spikes that may reach 2 m (6 feet) high and has saucer-shaped flowers with long, curved styles. Tussock bellflower, or Carpathian harebell (C. carpatica), with lavender to white, bowl-shaped, long-stalked flowers, several to the stem, has many forms. The plants, 15 to 25 cm (6 to 10......
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Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Council on (international organization)
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago) is the international organization that determines the criteria that, in turn, determine the officially accepted heights of buildings. It had been the council’s policy that “the height of a building is measured from the sidewalk level to the structural top of a building, including penthouse and...
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Tall Faʾrah (ancient city, Iraq)
ancient Sumerian city located south of Nippur in what is now south-central Iraq and originally on the bank of the Euphrates River. Excavations there in the first half of the 20th century uncovered three levels of habitation extending in time from the late prehistoric period to the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c. 2112–2004 bc). The most distinctive finds were ruins of well-built h...
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tall fescue (plant)
...F. elatior), a plant about 0.5 to 1.2 m (1 12 to 4 feet) tall, is used for fodder and as a permanent pasture grass. Both meadow fescue and tall or reed fescue (F. arundinacea) are Old World species that have become widespread in parts of North America. The shorter, fine-leaved sheep fescue (F. ovina), often found on......
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Tall Ibrāhīm (ancient city, Iraq)
ancient city of Mesopotamia located north of the site of Kish in what is now south-central Iraq. Cuthah was devoted to the cult of Nergal, the god of the lower world, and because of its sanctity it seems to have been kept in repair by all Sumerian and Semitic rulers down to a few centuries before the Christian era....
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Tall Laylān (Syria)
ancient city in northeastern Syria. Excavations of the mound at the site were begun by Harvey Weiss of Yale University in 1979. His work uncovered archaeological remains dating from about 5000 bc to 1726 bc, when the once-flourishing city was destroyed by Babylon....
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tall meadow buttercup (plant)
...human makers are thought to have burned off native vegetation and made way for aggressive species from the same or other areas. For instance, one of the best-known buttercups of northern Europe, Ranunculus acris, probably became more abundant and widespread as the forests were burned away. In the lowlands of northern Europe, this species probably became modified during the Stone Age into...
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tall oat grass
...Arrhenatherum and Danthonia (family Poaceae). Approximately six species of tall grasses, native to temperate Europe and Asia, constitute the genus Arrhenatherum. Tall oat grass (A. elatius), which has been introduced into various countries as a pasture grass, grows wild in many areas and is considered a weed, especially A. elatius variety......
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tall oil
dark, odorous liquid by-product of the sulfate (kraft) process of paper manufacture, used after refining to make coatings, sizing for paper, paint, varnish, linoleum, drying oils, emulsions, lubricants, and soaps. Tall oil is principally a mixture of resin acids, such as abietic acid, and fatty acids, such as oleic and linoleic acids, with some sterols and other compounds. It is obtained by chemi...
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Tall Rifʿat (ancient city, Syria)
ancient city in northwestern Syria. Arpad is frequently mentioned in the Old Testament and in Assyrian texts....
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Tall Sankarah (ancient city, Iraq)
one of the ancient capital cities of Babylonia, located about 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Uruk (Erech; Arabic Tall al-Warkāʾ), in southern Iraq. Larsa was probably founded in prehistoric times, but the most prosperous period of the city coincided with an independent dynasty inaugurated by a king named Naplanum (c. 2025–c. 2005 bc); he was a contem...
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tall tale (folk tale)
narrative that depicts the wild adventures of extravagantly exaggerated folk heroes. The tall tale is essentially an oral form of entertainment; the audience appreciates the imaginative invention rather than the literal meaning of the tales. Associated with the lore of the American frontier, tall tales often explain the origins of lakes, mountains, and canyons; they are spun around such legendary...
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