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  • Vic-Wells Ballet (British ballet company)
    English ballet company and school. It was formed in 1956 under a royal charter of incorporation granted by Queen Elizabeth II to the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and its sister organizations, the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet and the Sadler’s Wells School....
  • ViCAP
    ...crimes, such as serial murder, because details may be gathered from more than one case. Many law enforcement agencies now use computerized systems to aid them in such investigations; the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP), for example, is a database that contains information on violent crimes committed across the United States. The system compares all new cases with all....
  • Vicaquirao (Inca leader)
    ...Inca Roca named Yahuar Huacac as the seventh emperor, ensuring a peaceful succession to the throne. Yahuar Huacac was never very healthy and apparently spent most of his time in Cuzco. His brothers Vicaquirao (Wika-k’iraw) and Apo Mayta (’Apu Mayta) were able military leaders and incorporated lands south and east of Cuzco into the Inca domain. Yahuar Huacac’s principal wife...
  • vicar (ecclesiastical title)
    (from Latin vicarius, “substitute”), an official acting in some special way for a superior, primarily an ecclesiastical title in the Christian Church. In the Roman Empire as reorganized by Emperor Diocletian (reigned 284–305), the vicarius was an important official, and the title remained in use for secular officials in the Middle Ages. In the Roman Catholic Chur...
  • Vicar and Moses (work by Wood)
    ...manganese-brown, to which he added greens, blues, and a greyish olive. Subjects were in great variety; the best is probably the equestrian “Hudibras” glazed in manganese and orange. The “Vicar and Moses,” afterward repeated by his son and many other potters, appeared at this time and enjoyed great popularity. Of the animals, the stags are particularly well-known. Woo...
  • vicar apostolic (ecclesiastical title)
    In the early church, the name vicar, or legate, was used for the representative of the pope to the Eastern councils. Beginning in the 4th century, vicar of the apostolic see or vicar apostolic came to mean a residential bishop with certain rights of surveillance over neighbouring bishops. By the 13th century a vicar was an emissary sent from Rome to govern a diocese that was without a bishop or......
  • vicar forane (ecclesiastical title)
    A vicar forane (or rural dean) is a priest in charge of a subdivision of a diocese called a forane vicariate, or deanery. In canon law a priest working with or in place of the pastor of a parish is called a vicar, or curate....
  • vicar general (ecclesiastical title)
    A vicar general is appointed by the bishop as the highest administrative officer of the diocese, with most of the powers of the bishop. The pope governs his own diocese of Rome through a cardinal vicar and a special vicar general for the Vatican City. Vicar general is also the title for some heads of religious orders....
  • Vicar of Bray, The (English ballad)
    town (parish), Windsor and Maidenhead unitary authority, geographic and historic county of Berkshire, England, on the River Thames. “The Vicar of Bray,” a well-known English ballad of unknown authorship, tells how the vicar of the community retained his ecclesiastical living by changing creed according to necessity from the time of Charles II until the accession of George I. The......
  • vicar of the apostolic see (ecclesiastical title)
    In the early church, the name vicar, or legate, was used for the representative of the pope to the Eastern councils. Beginning in the 4th century, vicar of the apostolic see or vicar apostolic came to mean a residential bishop with certain rights of surveillance over neighbouring bishops. By the 13th century a vicar was an emissary sent from Rome to govern a diocese that was without a bishop or......
  • Vicar of Wakefield, The (novel by Goldsmith)
    ...which contains charming vignettes of rural life while denouncing the evictions of the country poor at the hands of wealthy landowners. In 1766 Goldsmith revealed himself as a novelist with The Vicar of Wakefield (written in 1762), a portrait of village life whose idealization of the countryside, sentimental moralizing, and melodramatic incidents are underlain by a sharp but......
  • vicāra (Hinduism)
    ...creator of souls) and māyā (illusion) parallels that of Śaṅkara (c. ad 700–750). His original contribution to yogic philosophy is the technique of vicāra (self-“pondering” inquiry)....
  • vicariance, theory of (biology)
    Within historical biogeography, two views—the dispersalist and vicariance hypotheses of biotic distribution patterns—have been at odds. According to the dispersalist view, speciation occurs as animals spread out from a centre of origin, crossing preexisting barriers that they would not readily recross and that would cut them off from the original group. The vicariance explanation......
  • vicarious liability (law)
    Vicarious liability is liability imposed on the employer of an employee for the tort of the latter when committed in the course of his employment. This is a form of strict liability, since the “innocent” master is made liable for the fault of his employee....
  • Vicat, Louis (French engineer)
    The technique of cable spinning for suspension bridges was invented by the French engineer Louis Vicat, a contemporary of Roebling. Vicat’s method employed a traveling wheel to carry the continuous cable strand from the anchorage on one side up over the tower, down on a predetermined sag (catenary) to the midpoint of the bridge, up and over the tower on the farther side to the farther......
  • vice (tool)
    device consisting of two parallel jaws for holding a workpiece; one of the jaws is fixed and the other movable by a screw, a lever, or a cam. When used for holding a workpiece during hand operations, such as filing, hammering, or sawing, the vise may be permanently bolted to a bench. In vises designed to hold metallic workpieces, the active faces of the jaws are hardened steel plates, often remova...
  • vice (philosophy)
    ...the life of man in such a condition must have been “poor, nasty, brutish and short,” Rousseau claims that original man, while admittedly solitary, was healthy, happy, good, and free. The vices of men, he argues, date from the time when men formed societies....
  • vice chamberlain (government official)
    ...tacitly recognized the right of the royal boroughs to participate in the diet as the third estate but reserved for themselves the positions on the board of provincial officers, including that of the vice chamberlain, who, in the king’s name, supervised municipal administration. Although the boroughs gained some reasonable satisfaction, the landowning nobility was permitted to engage in.....
  • Vice in Chicago (work by Reckless)
    ...observational studies of crime in Chicago. That research led to his dissertation, The Natural History of Vice Areas in Chicago (1925), which was published as Vice in Chicago (1933), a landmark sociological study of fraud, prostitution, and organized crime in the city’s “vice” districts....
  • vice president (government official)
    ...to a five-year renewable term by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both houses of parliament and the elected members of the legislative assemblies of all the states. The vice president, chosen by an electoral college made up of only the two houses of parliament, presides over the Rajya Sabha. If the president dies or otherwise leaves office, the vice president......
  • vice president of the United States of America (United States government)
    officer next in rank to the president of the United States, who ascends to the presidency on the event of the president’s death, disability, resignation, or removal. The vice president also serves as the presiding officer of the U.S. Senate, a role that is mostly ceremonial but that gives the vice president the tie-breaking vote when the Senate is deadl...
  • vicecomites (Carolingian noble)
    In the Carolingian period of European history, the vicecomites, or missi comitis, were deputies, vicars, or lieutenants of the counts, whose official powers they exercised by delegation. As the countships eventually became hereditary, the lieutenancies did as well: for instance, in France the viscounts in Narbonne, in......
  • Vicence, Armand-Augustin-Louis de Caulaincourt, duc de (French general)
    French general, diplomat, and ultimately foreign minister under Napoleon. As the Emperor’s loyal master of horse from 1804, Caulaincourt was at Napoleon’s side in his great battles, and his Mémoires provide an important source for the period 1812 to 1814....
  • Vicente, Esteban (American painter)
    Spanish-born American painter (b. Jan. 20, 1903, Turégano, Spain—d. Jan. 10, 2001, Bridgehampton, N.Y.), was a first-generation member of the avant-garde New York school of painting, which flourished from the 1940s to the ’80s and established New York City as the epicentre of the international art world. In 1929, after training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando...
  • Vicente García, Manuel del Popolo (Spanish singer and composer)
    Spanish tenor and composer, one of the finest singers of his time....
  • Vicente, Gil (Portuguese goldsmith)
    ...the New World, goldsmiths such as Enrique and Juan de Arfe produced vast containers for the Host known as custodia. The most important Portuguese work, the Belém monstrance, created by Gil Vicente in 1506 for Belém Monastery near Lisbon, is still Gothic in style; later, Portugal developed its own style, related to Spanish work but not copied from it....
  • Vicente, Gil (Portuguese dramatist)
    chief dramatist of Portugal, sometimes called the Portuguese Plautus. He was also a noted lyric poet, in both Portuguese and Spanish....
  • Vicente López (county, Argentina)
    partido (county) of Gran (Greater) Buenos Aires, eastern Argentina, directly north of the city of Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires provincia (province), on the Río de la Plata estuary. Colonization of the area began with the second and permanent founding of Buenos Aires (1580). The region was called Costa de Monte ...
  • Vicentino, Nicola (Italian composer)
    Further experiments in chromaticism were carried out by Nicola Vicentino, whose dramatic setting of O messaggi del cor, by the Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto, makes highly effective use of a mounting modulatory scheme (changes of key) to enhance the insistent repetition of the opening exclamations. His early madrigals exploit a more classical vein, without ignoring illustrative......
  • Vicenza (Italy)
    city, episcopal see, Veneto region, northern Italy, traversed by the Bacchiglione and Retrone rivers, at the eastern end of the valley between the Monti Lessini and the Monti Berici (which connects Lombardy with Veneto), northwest of Padua. Originally a settlement of the Ligurians or Veneti, it became the Roman Vicetia and, after the barbarian invasions, the seat of a Lombard du...
  • “vicerè, I” (work by De Roberto)
    ...to pick up the threads from gossip and chance remarks. Another verista, Federico De Roberto, in his novel I vicerè (1894; The Viceroys), has given a cynical and wryly funny account of an aristocratic Sicilian family that adapted all too well to change. Capuana, the founder of ......
  • viceroy (government official)
    one who rules a country or province as the representative of his sovereign or king and who is empowered to act in the sovereign’s name. Viceroy (virrey) was the title given to the principal governors of Spain’s American colonies, as well as to the governors of the “kingdoms” (reinos) of peninsular Spain proper (e.g., Aragon, Valencia)....
  • viceroy (butterfly)
    The viceroy (Basilarchia archippus, or Limenitis archippus) is known for its imitation of the monarch butterfly, which is distasteful to predators. Through this resemblance the edible viceroy, which can be distinguished by its smaller size and by a black transverse band on each hindwing, probably derives protection from predatory attack. Viceroy larvae feed on willow, aspen, and......
  • viceroyalty (government)
    Spain initially organized its management and governance of the New World according to viceroyalties—geographical regions administered by a viceroy, a direct representative of the Spanish crown vested with executive, legislative, judicial, military, and ecclesiastical power....
  • Viceroyalty of la Plata (historical area, South America)
    the final of the four viceroyalties that Spain created during its colonization of Central and South America. Including the territory now comprising Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia, the new viceroyalty (established in 1776) controlled an area previously under the administration of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The decision to create a fourth viceroyalty was a result both of ...
  • Viceroy’s House (palace, New Delhi, India)
    ...Fire, but the total result was quite different: a garden-city pattern, based on a series of hexagons separated by broad avenues with double lines of trees. In his single most important building, the Viceroy’s House (1913–30), he combined aspects of classical architecture with features of Indian decoration. Lutyens was knighted in 1918....
  • Viceroys, The (work by De Roberto)
    ...to pick up the threads from gossip and chance remarks. Another verista, Federico De Roberto, in his novel I vicerè (1894; The Viceroys), has given a cynical and wryly funny account of an aristocratic Sicilian family that adapted all too well to change. Capuana, the founder of ......
  • Vices and Virtues (Middle English work)
    ...after the conquest, and one of these, the Peterborough Chronicle, continues to 1154. Two manuscripts of about 1200 contain 12th-century sermons, and another has the workmanlike compilation Vices and Virtues, composed about 1200. But the English language faced stiff competition from both Anglo-Norman (the insular dialect of French being used increasingly in the monasteries) and......
  • Vicetia (Italy)
    city, episcopal see, Veneto region, northern Italy, traversed by the Bacchiglione and Retrone rivers, at the eastern end of the valley between the Monti Lessini and the Monti Berici (which connects Lombardy with Veneto), northwest of Padua. Originally a settlement of the Ligurians or Veneti, it became the Roman Vicetia and, after the barbarian invasions, the seat of a Lombard du...
  • Vich (Spain)
    city, Barcelona provincia (province), in the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Catalonia, northeastern Spain. The city is situated on the Vic Plain and lies along the Meder River, which is an affluent of the Ter River. Because it was first inhab...
  • Vichada (department, Colombia)
    departamento, eastern Colombia. It lies in the Llanos (plains) of the Orinoco River basin and is bounded north and east by Venezuela and south by the Guaviare River. It is drained by several navigable tributaries of the Orinoco River, including the Meta (along the northern border), Vichada, and Guaviare. As elsewhere in the Llanos, cattle raising is a dominant economic ac...
  • Vichada River (river, Colombia)
    ...its way through a series of narrow passages among enormous granite boulders. The waters fall in a succession of rapids, ending with the Atures Rapids. In this region, the main tributaries are the Vichada and Tomo rivers from the Colombian Llanos, and the Guayapo, Sipapo, Autana, and Cuao rivers from the Guiana Highlands....
  • Vichuga (Russia)
    centre of a rayon (sector), Ivanovo oblast (province), western Russia. It lies about 18 miles (30 km) south of the Volga River and 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Ivanovo city. Vichuga developed from a number of industrial villages and was incorporated in 1920. It is now an important centre of the textile industry, especially for cotton, and it also has casting and other industries. Po...
  • Vichy (France)
    town, Allier département, Auvergne région, central France. It lies on the east bank of the Allier River. Vichy is the chief spa of France. The town, largely modern and with a profusion of hotels, is separated from the river by parks surrounding the two extensive bathing establishments....
  • Vichy France (French history)
    (July 1940–September 1944), France under the regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain from the Nazi German defeat of France to the Allied liberation in World War II....
  • Vichy-Chamrond, Marie de (French author)
    woman of letters and a leading figure in French society....
  • Vicia (plant)
    any herbaceous plant of the genus Vicia, within the pea family (Fabaceae). About 150 species are known. The plants are 30–120 cm (1–4 feet) tall, with trailing or climbing stems and compound leaves with several pairs of leaflets. The magenta, bluish white, white, or yellow flowers are borne singly or in clusters. Two to ten seeds are borne in a pod. A few species of vetch are ...
  • Vicia faba (plant)
    Third in importance, the principal bean of Europe though less well known in the United States, is the broad, or fava, bean (Vicia faba). The broad bean will not tolerate hot weather; it is grown in summer only in the cool parts of the temperate zone and during the winter in the warmer parts. Unlike other beans described, it tolerates slight freezing. The plant is erect, from 600 to 1,500......
  • vicinal dihalide (chemical compound)
    Vicinal dihalides, compounds that have halogens on adjacent carbons, are prepared by the reaction between a halogen and an alkene. The simplest example is the reaction between ethylene and chlorine to give 1,2-dichloroethane (ethylene dichloride). 1,2-Dichloroethane leads all other organohalogen compounds in terms of its annual production, which averages nearly 20 million tons globally per......
  • vicious circle (logic)
    ...many other paradoxes devised by Burali-Forti, George Godfrey Berry, and others, Russell and Whitehead concluded that the main difficulty lies in allowing the construction of entities that contain a “vicious circle”—i.e., entities that are used in the construction or definition of themselves....
  • Vicious Circle, the (literary group)
    informal group of American literary men and women who met daily for lunch on weekdays at a large round table in the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the 1920s and ’30s. The Algonquin Round Table began meeting in 1919, and within a few years its participants included many of the best-known writers, journalists, and artists in New York City. Among them were Dorothy Parker, Alexander Wo...
  • Vicious, Sid (British musician)
    ...and Glen Matlock (b. Aug. 27, 1956London). A later member was Sid Vicious (byname of John Simon Ritchie; b. May 10, 1957London—d. Feb. 2,......
  • vicitra vina (musical instrument)
    ...stone or a cylinder of wood or horn over the strings. Primarily played as a solo instrument, it is considered a very difficult instrument to master and requires a very delicate touch. The vicitra vina of northern India (a modern fretless variant of the vina) is built on the same principles as the gottuvadyam; it has, however, a lighter body, which gives it a......
  • Vickers Diamond Pyramid Hardness tester (metallurgy)
    The Vickers hardness tester uses a square-based diamond pyramid indenter, and the hardness number is equal to the load divided by the product of the lengths of the diagonals of the square impression. Vickers hardness is the most accurate for very hard materials and can be used on thin sheets....
  • Vickers, Edward (British industrialist)
    Even before the ceiling on speed of the piston plane was reached in the DC-7 in the mid-1950s, the Vickers company in Britain had flown an adaptation of the turbine that used the favourable power-to-weight ratio of the jet engine harnessed by gears to a propeller and placed in an airframe that could operate as a turboprop plane at 40 or 50 mile/h faster than the fastest piston engines similarly......
  • Vickers hardness (mineralogy)
    a measure of the hardness of a material, calculated from the size of an impression produced under load by a pyramid-shaped diamond indenter. Devised in the 1920s by engineers at Vickers, Ltd., in the United Kingdom, the diamond pyramid hardness test, as it also became known, permitted the establishment of a continuous scale of comparable numbers that accurately reflected the wi...
  • Vickers, Ltd. (British firm)
    ...Motor Holdings Limited, comprising the automobile and diesel-engine operations, was created in 1973 and returned to private stockholders. In 1980 Rolls-Royce Motor Holdings Limited was acquired by Vickers Ltd., becoming a subsidiary of the latter. A British manufacturing and engineering company with a long history as a defense contractor, Vickers was converted to a public limited company the......
  • Vickers machine gun
    first fully automatic machine gun, developed by engineer and inventor Hiram Maxim in about 1884, while he was residing in England. It was manufactured by Vickers and was sometimes known as the Vickers-Maxim and sometimes just Vickers. These guns were used by every major power. The Maxim gun was recoil-operated and was cooled by a water jacket surrounding the barrel. The Maxim w...
  • Vickers Medium (tank)
    ...the mobility of tanks. Even before World War I had ended, work had started on the Medium D with a maximum speed of 20 miles per hour. Between 1923 and 1928 the British army ordered 160 of the new Vickers Medium tanks. They were virtually the only tanks the British army had until the early 1930s and the only tanks to be produced in quantity anywhere in the world during the mid-1920s. The......
  • Vickers Vanguard (airplane)
    ...of these planes and the high fuel consumption in comparison with the best piston planes never made them exceptionally popular. The Vickers Viscount was adopted for its newness and its successor the Vanguard for its large windows. Finally in 1957 the Bristol company in Britain built the Britannia, a turboprop that operated at a reasonable cost and with a longer stage than others. Unfortunately.....
  • Vickers Viscount (airplane)
    ...airlines. In the United States the relatively short stage of these planes and the high fuel consumption in comparison with the best piston planes never made them exceptionally popular. The Vickers Viscount was adopted for its newness and its successor the Vanguard for its large windows. Finally in 1957 the Bristol company in Britain built the Britannia, a turboprop that operated at a......
  • Vickers Wellington (airplane)
    ...engineer before joining the airship (dirigible) department of Vickers Ltd. in 1913 as a designer. Eventually turning to aircraft, he employed his geodetic system in the Royal Air Force’s (RAF’s) Wellington bomber in World War II. His researches into detonation effects led to his inventing the rotating bouncing bomb that, when dropped from an aircraft, skipped over the water and ex...
  • Vickers White Metal (alloy)
    alloy composed approximately of 93 percent tin, 5 percent antimony, and 2 percent copper, used for making various utensils, including teapots, jugs, drinking vessels, candlesticks, and urns, and for official maces. Similar in colour to pewter, britannia metal is harder, stronger, and easier to work than other tin alloys; it can be worked fr...
  • Vickers-Armstrong (tank)
    ...the value of light tanks armed only with machine guns decreased, and heavier models armed with 37- to 47-millimetre guns for fighting other tanks began to displace them. An early example was the Vickers-Armstrong six-ton model of 1930, copied on a large scale in the Soviet Union (as the T-26). The most successful example was the BT, also built in large numbers in the Soviet Union. The......
  • Vickers-Armstrong A.10 (tank)
    ...compartment at the rear, and rotating turret at the centre. The turret mounted the main armament and was occupied by the tank’s commander, gunner, and loader. This configuration, introduced by the Vickers-Armstrong A.10 tank designed in 1934, became almost universal after World War II, but after 1960 it was abandoned in some cases in favour of novel configurations. One widely adopted......
  • Vickers-Maxim machine gun
    first fully automatic machine gun, developed by engineer and inventor Hiram Maxim in about 1884, while he was residing in England. It was manufactured by Vickers and was sometimes known as the Vickers-Maxim and sometimes just Vickers. These guns were used by every major power. The Maxim gun was recoil-operated and was cooled by a water jacket surrounding the barrel. The Maxim w...
  • Vickery, Howard Leroy (United States admiral)
    U.S. naval officer and outstanding merchant shipbuilder of World War II....
  • Vickrey auction (business)
    In awarding him the 1996 Nobel Prize, the selection committee specifically cited his novel approach to auctioneering (now known as a “Vickrey auction”), which, through sealed bidding, awards the auctioned item to the highest bidder but at the price submitted by the second highest bidder. This method, said Vickrey, benefits both buyer and seller by guaranteeing bids that reflect the.....
  • Vickrey, William (American economist)
    Canadian-born American economist who brought innovative analysis to the problems of incomplete, or asymmetrical, information. He shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Economics with British economist James A. Mirrlees....
  • Vickrey, William Spencer (American economist)
    Canadian-born American economist who brought innovative analysis to the problems of incomplete, or asymmetrical, information. He shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Economics with British economist James A. Mirrlees....
  • Vicksburg (Mississippi, United States)
    city, seat (1836) of Warren county, western Mississippi, U.S. It lies on the Mississippi River, at the mouth of the Yazoo River, 44 miles (71 km) west of Jackson. Frenchmen settled there and built Fort-Saint-Pierre (1719) on the high bluffs, but the settlement was wiped out by Native Americans 10 years later. A military ou...
  • Vicksburg Campaign (American Civil War)
    (1862–63), in the American Civil War, the campaign by Union forces to take the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which lay on the east bank of the Mississippi River, halfway between Memphis (north) and New Orleans (south). The capture of Vicksburg divided the Confederacy and proved the military genius of Union General Ulysses S. Grant....
  • Vicksburg National Military Park (park, Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States)
    Vicksburg National Military Park, established in 1899, occupies 2.7 square miles (7 square km) and partially encircles the city. It preserves the site of the Civil War campaigns and contains Vicksburg National Cemetery, the restored Union gunboat USS Cairo, numerous monuments and reconstructed trenches, and other fortifications. The Gray and Blue Naval Museum contains a diorama of the......
  • Vicky Cristina Barcelona (film by Allen)
    ...Oscar nomination for best screenplay, and it featured actress Scarlett Johansson, who also starred in Allen’s comedy-drama Scoop (2006) and in the sultry Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), which was set in Spain and starred Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. Cassandra’s Dream (2007), like ...
  • ViCLAS
    ...to have been committed by the same offender, the system alerts the appropriate law enforcement agency. Other countries have developed systems similar to ViCAP; one of the most elaborate is the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS), which is managed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. ViCLAS collects extensive data on all homicides and attempted homicides, sexual assaults,......
  • Vico, Giambattista (Italian philosopher)
    Italian philosopher of cultural history and law, who is recognized today as a forerunner of cultural anthropology, or ethnology. He attempted, especially in his major work, the Scienza nuova (1725; “New Science”), to bring about the convergence of history, from the one side, and the more systematic social sciences, from the other, so that ...
  • victim (criminology)
    Knowledge of the types of people who are victims of crime requires that they report their crimes, either to the police or to researchers who ask them about their experiences as a victim. Some crimes are greatly underreported in official statistics—rape is an example—but may be more accurately reported in victim surveys. Yet just as those who are caught or admit to committing crimes.....
  • victim survey (criminology)
    To overcome problems with official statistics, researchers in many countries have utilized victimization surveys, in which random samples of the population are generally asked whether they have been victims of crime within a specified period of time. Although these surveys have methodological problems (e.g., they rely entirely on the memory of victims), they have generally been more accurate......
  • Victim, The (work by Bellow)
    ...as a mirror reflecting society, a significant number of contemporary novelists were reluctant to abandon Social Realism, which they pursued in much more personal terms. In novels such as The Victim (1947), The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Herzog (1964), Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970), and Humboldt’s Gift (1975),......
  • victimization (criminology)
    ...victimology focuses on whether the perpetrators were complete strangers, mere acquaintances, friends, family members, or even intimates and why a particular person or place was targeted. Criminal victimization may inflict economic costs, physical injuries, and psychological harm....
  • victimization survey (criminology)
    To overcome problems with official statistics, researchers in many countries have utilized victimization surveys, in which random samples of the population are generally asked whether they have been victims of crime within a specified period of time. Although these surveys have methodological problems (e.g., they rely entirely on the memory of victims), they have generally been more accurate......
  • victimless crime
    ...for that distortion is the extent to which police resources are directed toward the investigation of one kind of crime rather than another, particularly with regard to what are known as “victimless crimes,” such as the possession of drugs. These crimes are not discovered unless the police endeavour to look for them, and they do not figure in the statistics of reported crime......
  • victimology
    branch of criminology that scientifically studies the relationship between an injured party and an offender by examining the causes and the nature of the consequent suffering. Specifically, victimology focuses on whether the perpetrators were complete strangers, mere acquaintances, friends, family members, or even intimates and why a particular person or place...
  • Victor (submarine class)
    The most prominent submarine-hunting submarines of the Soviet Union were of the three Victor classes. The Victor I vessels, which entered service beginning in 1968, introduced the “tear-drop” hull configuration to the underwater Soviet Navy. These and the 6,000-ton Victor II and III classes of the following decades were fitted with rocket-launched torpedoes or nuclear depth bombs,......
  • Victor (California, United States)
    city, San Bernardino county, southwestern California, U.S. Located nearly 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Los Angeles, it lies along the Mojave River in the Victor Valley at the edge of the Mojave Desert, just north of the San Bernardino Mountains. The settlement was founded in 1885 by the Santa Fe Railway. Originally name...
  • Victor Amadeus I (duke of Savoy)
    duke of Savoy from 1630 to 1637, son of Charles Emmanuel I....
  • Victor Amadeus II (king of Sardinia-Piedmont)
    duke of Savoy who through his diplomacy became the first king of Sardinia-Piedmont and thus established the foundation for the future Italian national state....
  • Victor Amadeus III (king of Sardinia)
    Savoyard king of Sardinia (Piedmont-Sardinia) from 1773 to 1796....
  • Victor B.2 (aircraft)
    Page’s company manufactured transports and the Halifax heavy bomber during World War II. The Handley Page Victor B.2, a long-range medium bomber, was deployed with the Royal Air Force Bomber Command beginning in 1962. Page was knighted in 1942....
  • Victor Company of Japan (Japanese company)
    The first home VCRs were introduced in the mid-1970s, first by Sony and then by the Victor Company of Japan (JVC), both using 12-mm (one-half-inch) tape packaged in a cassette. Two incompatible standards could not coexist for home use, and today the Sony Betamax system is obsolete and only the JVC Video Home System (VHS) has survived. Narrower 8-mm tape is used in small cassettes for handheld......
  • Victor Emanuel Range (mountains, Papua New Guinea)
    section of the central highlands, east of the Star Mountains, Papua New Guinea, southwestern Pacific Ocean. The rugged range, rising sheer from the south to over 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), is composed of coralline limestone, which is so porous that water falling on it quickly percolates into the ground, making surface water scarce. The highest peak on the range is Mount Wamtaki...
  • Victor Emmanuel I (king of Sardinia)
    duke of Aosta, duke of Savoy, and king of Sardinia (1802–21) on his brother Charles Emmanuel IV’s abdication....
  • Victor Emmanuel II (king of Italy)
    king of Sardinia–Piedmont who became the first king of a united Italy....
  • Victor Emmanuel II, Monument to (monument, Rome, Italy)
    ...appropriate in a country that was home to the Renaissance. It thus blended well with the growth of Italian nationalism, of which the most conspicuous architectural expression is Giuseppe Sacconi’s Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, Rome (1885–1911). This amazingly confident, if generally unloved, re-creation of imperial Roman grandeur commemorates the king under whom Italian unity ha...
  • Victor Emmanuel III (king of Italy)
    king of Italy whose reign brought the end of the Italian monarchy....
  • Victor, Frances Auretta Fuller (American author and historian)
    American writer and historian who wrote prolifically, and sometimes without acknowledgement, on the history of the western United States, particularly the Pacific Northwest....
  • Victor, Geraldo Bessa (Angolan poet)
    Angolan lyric poet whose work expresses the dream of racial harmony and the need to recapture the openness and purity of childhood....
  • Victor Gollancz, Ltd. (British publication)
    ...officer training courses at Repton, a well-known public school (1916–18). From 1920 to 1928 he worked in the publishing house of Benn Brothers, and in the latter year he founded his own firm, Victor Gollancz, Ltd. He quickly set the pattern that was to mark his entire career as a publisher, issuing both best sellers and works supporting his favoured causes. Among his better known authors...
  • Victor Gruen Associates (American firm)
    ...the United States, where he began designing projects in various cities, beginning with the Lederer Store (New York City, 1939). He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1943. In 1950 he established Victor Gruen Associates, a firm composed of professionals from all fields of engineering, architecture, and planning, and turned his attention to solving problems of modern urban areas for mass......
  • Victor Harbor (South Australia, Australia)
    town and coastal resort, South Australia, situated at the mouth of the Inman River, on the northwest shore of Encounter Bay (so called for the chance meeting of the British explorer Matthew Flinders and the French navigator Nicolas Baudin, in 1802). Founded in 1839, the town was named for HMS Victor, a ship that had entered the bay two years earlie...
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