Skip this Advertisement

A-Z Browse

  • Wenceslas IV (king of Bohemia and Germany)
    German king and, as Wenceslas IV, king of Bohemia, whose weak and tempestuous, though eventful, reign was continually plagued by wars and princely rivalries that he was unable to control, plunging his territories into a state of virtual anarchy until he was stripped of his powers altogether by a rebellious nobility....
  • Wenceslas, Saint (prince of Bohemia)
    prince of Bohemia, martyr, and patron saint of Czechoslovakia....
  • Wencheng (Chinese philosopher)
    Chinese scholar-official whose Idealistic interpretation of Neo-Confucianism influenced philosophical thinking in East Asia for centuries. Though his government career was rather unstable, his suppression of rebellions brought a century of peace to his region. His philosophical doctrines, emphasizing understanding of the world from within the mind, were in dir...
  • Wend (people)
    any member of a group of Slavic tribes that had settled in the area between the Oder River (on the east) and the Elbe and Saale rivers (on the west) by the 5th century ad, in what is now eastern Germany. The Wends occupied the eastern borders of the domain of the Franks and other Germanic peoples. From the 6th century the Franks warred sporadically against the Wend...
  • Wendat (people)
    among North American Indians, a confederacy of four Iroquois-speaking bands of the Huron nation—the Rock, Bear, Cord, and Deer bands—together with a few smaller communities that joined them at different periods for protection against the Iroquois Confederacy. When first encountered by Europeans in 1615, the Wendat occupied a territory, sometimes ...
  • Wendel, Heinrich (German theatrical designer)
    German theatrical designer who pioneered new techniques in stagecraft with the Wuppertal theatre company from 1953 to 1964 and then with the German Opera on the Rhine, Düsseldorf....
  • Wenden (Latvia)
    city and district centre, Latvia, situated on the Gauja River at the foot of the Vidzeme (Livonia) highlands, 55 miles (90 km) northeast of the city of Riga. It is an old city, first mentioned in documents in 1206, and its castle dates from 1207. It was once a prosperous town of the Hanseatic League, as evidenced in its fine architecture, including the Church of St. John (1283). The old town is no...
  • Wenders, Wim (German director)
    German film director who, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, was one of the principal members of the New German Cinema of the 1970s....
  • Wendi (emperor of Han dynasty)
    posthumous name (shi) of the fourth emperor (reigned 180–157 bc) of the Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220) of China. His reign was marked by good government and the peaceful consolidation of imperial power....
  • Wendi (emperor of Ming dynasty)
    reign name (nianhao) of the third emperor (1402–24) of China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644), which he raised to its greatest power. He moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, which was rebuilt with the Forbidden City....
  • Wendi (emperor of Wei dynasty)
    founder of the short-lived Wei dynasty (ad 220–265/266) during the Sanguo (Three Kingdoms) period of Chinese history....
  • Wendi (emperor of Sui dynasty)
    posthumous name (shi) of the emperor (reigned 581–604) who reunified and reorganized China after 300 years of instability, founding the Sui dynasty (581–618). He conquered southern China, which long had been divided into numerous small kingdoms, and he broke the power of the Turks in the northern part of the country....
  • Wendish languages
    closely related West Slavic languages or dialects; their small number of speakers in eastern Germany are the survivors of a more extensive medieval language group. The centre of the Upper Sorbian speech area is Bautzen, near the border with the Czech Republic, while Cottbus, near Poland, is the centre for Lower Sorbian. The oldest written record of Sorbian dates from the 15th ce...
  • Wendling, Anton (German artist)
    In Germany such distinguished prewar church architects as Dominikus Böhm and Rudolf Schwarz and the stained-glass artist Anton Wendling were able to resume careers interrupted by the Nazi era and to set the course for a whole new generation of stained-glass artists, especially in the Rhineland. Inspired by the example of Thorn Prikker, these artists have continued to explore the unique......
  • Wendron Moor (moor, England, United Kingdom)
    ...there, but dairy cattle graze and fodder crops are grown. Early-season vegetables, fruits, and flowers for the London market are intensively grown in sheltered valleys and coves on both coasts. Wendron Moor, 400 to 800 feet (120 to 245 metres) in elevation, an igneous-based granite intrusive in the centre of the plateau, is used for grazing cattle. From the early 18th century the northern......
  • Wendt, Albert (Samoan writer)
    Samoan novelist and poet who wrote about present-day Samoan life. Perhaps the best-known writer in the South Pacific, Wendt sought to counteract the frequently romanticized, often racist literature about Polynesians written by outsiders....
  • “Wenfu” (work by Lu Ji)
    ...fu, an intricately structured form of poetry mixed with prose. A prime specimen of this form is his Wenfu (“On Literature”; Eng. trans. The Art of Writing), a subtle and important work of literary criticism that defines and demonstrates the principles of composition with rare insight and precision....
  • Wengen (Switzerland)
    ...Engadin and Grimentz in the Val d’Anniviers of Valais, are renowned for their picturesque beauty, and others, such as Crans-Montana on the slopes above the Rhône valley in Valais canton and Wengen in the Berner Oberland, have developed into famous resorts. Places such as Bad Ragaz in the Rhine valley and Leukerbad in Valais canton are noted as spas. Valley forks, where the traffic...
  • Wengong (ruler of Jin)
    After his death the state of Qi failed to maintain its leading status. The leadership, after a number of years, passed to Wengong of Jin (reigned 636–628 bc), the ruler of the mountainous state north of the Huang He. Under Wengong and his capable successors, the overlordship was institutionalized until it took the place of the Zhou monarchy. Interstate meetings were held at fi...
  • Wenia (Austria)
    city and Bundesland (federal state), the capital of Austria. Of the country’s nine states, Vienna is the smallest in area but the largest in population....
  • Wenjin (Chinese painter)
    Chinese landscape painter of the Ming dynasty....
  • Wenker, Georg (German linguist)
    The first large-scale enterprise in linguistic geography was the preparation of the German linguistic atlas. In the 1880s, the initiator of this great undertaking, Georg Wenker, composed 40 test sentences that illustrated most of the important ways in which dialects differed and sent them to schoolmasters in over 40,000 places in the German Empire. The sentences were to be translated into the......
  • Wenlock Edge (escarpment, England, United Kingdom)
    ...of the Silurian System, representing those rocks deposited worldwide during the Wenlock Epoch (428.2–422.9 million years ago). Its name is derived from the type district at Wenlock Edge, a prominent escarpment that stretches for about 29 km (18 miles) southwest from the town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire, Eng. The ridge is formed by fossiliferous limestones (Wenlock......
  • Wenlock Limestone (geology)
    ...species Cyrtograptus centrifugus. The base of the Wenlock Series is also marked by the fossil disappearance of the conodont Pterospathodus amorphognathoides. The Wenlock Limestone is one of the best-studied Silurian formations of the world and is noted for its abounding variety of excellently preserved fossils: brachiopods (lamp shells), corals, trilobites,......
  • Wenlock Series (geology)
    the second of four main divisions (in ascending order) of the Silurian System, representing those rocks deposited worldwide during the Wenlock Epoch (428.2–422.9 million years ago). Its name is derived from the type district at Wenlock Edge, a prominent escarpment that stretches for about 29 km (18 miles) southwest from the town of Much Wenlock in Shrop...
  • Wenlock Stage (geology)
    the second of four main divisions (in ascending order) of the Silurian System, representing those rocks deposited worldwide during the Wenlock Epoch (428.2–422.9 million years ago). Its name is derived from the type district at Wenlock Edge, a prominent escarpment that stretches for about 29 km (18 miles) southwest from the town of Much Wenlock in Shrop...
  • Wenlockian Series (geology)
    the second of four main divisions (in ascending order) of the Silurian System, representing those rocks deposited worldwide during the Wenlock Epoch (428.2–422.9 million years ago). Its name is derived from the type district at Wenlock Edge, a prominent escarpment that stretches for about 29 km (18 miles) southwest from the town of Much Wenlock in Shrop...
  • Wenlockian Stage (geology)
    the second of four main divisions (in ascending order) of the Silurian System, representing those rocks deposited worldwide during the Wenlock Epoch (428.2–422.9 million years ago). Its name is derived from the type district at Wenlock Edge, a prominent escarpment that stretches for about 29 km (18 miles) southwest from the town of Much Wenlock in Shrop...
  • Weno (island, Micronesia)
    ...sand and coral islets. The bank (often referred to as a reef) encloses a lagoon 822 square miles (2,129 square km) in area and has a diameter of some 40 miles (65 km). Chief islands of the group are Weno (formerly Moen), Tonoas, Fefan, Uman, Uatschaluk (Udot), and Tol....
  • wenrenhua (Chinese painting)
    ideal form of the Chinese scholar-painter who was more interested in personal erudition and expression than in literal representation or an immediately attractive surface beauty. First formulated in the Northern Song period (960–1127)—at which time it was called shidafuhua—by the poet-calligrapher Su Dongpo, the ideal o...
  • Wenrohronon (people)
    Iroquois-speaking North American Indians whose name means “people of the place of the floating film,” probably after the oil spring at what is now Cuba, N.Y., U.S., where they lived. The oil was a highly regarded medicine for various ailments. Like other Iroquoian tribes, the Wenrohronon were traditionally semisedentary, cultivating corn (maize), hunting, and fishing for their liveli...
  • Wenshiri horst (rock formation, Japan)
    ...the west, where it drops abruptly to the Teshio-gawa (Teshio River) valley. Elevations are generally between 2,500 and 3,100 ft (750 and 950 m). In the south central part of the range, however, the Wenshiri horst (block of the Earth’s crust set off by faults) protrudes above the surrounding area and is crowned by Teshio-dake (Mt. Teshio; 5,115 ft)....
  • Wenshushili (bodhisattva)
    in Mahāyāna Buddhism, the bodhisattva (“Buddha-to-be”) personifying supreme wisdom. His name in Sanskrit means “gentle, or sweet, glory”; he is also known as Mãnjughoṣa (“Sweet Voice”) and Vāgīśvara (“Lord of Speech”). In China he is called Wen-shu Shih-li, in Japan Monju, and in Tibet ...
  • Wensleydale (region, England, United Kingdom)
    the upper valley (dale) of the River Ure in the Pennine highlands of Richmondshire district, administrative county of North Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, England. Famous for the cheese to which it gave its name, Wensleydale is a centre of cheese production and tourism. Steep limestone slopes flank the valley floor, and waterfalls ...
  • Wenström, Jonas (Swedish engineer)
    ...the magnetic field is more effective if the coil windings are embedded in slots in the rotating iron armature. The slotted armature, still in use today, was invented in 1880 by the Swedish engineer Jonas Wenström. Faraday’s 1831 discovery of the principle of the AC transformer was not put to practical use until the late 1880s when the heated debate over the merits of direct-curren...
  • Went, F. A. F. C. (Austrian botanist)
    Dutch botanist who initiated the study of plant hormones and advanced the study of botany in The Netherlands....
  • Went, Friedrich August Ferdinand Christian (Austrian botanist)
    Dutch botanist who initiated the study of plant hormones and advanced the study of botany in The Netherlands....
  • wentletrap (gastropod family)
    any marine snail of the family Epitoniidae (subclass Prosobranchia of the class Gastropoda), in which the turreted shell—consisting of whorls that form a high, conical spiral—has deeply ribbed sculpturing. Most species are white, less than 5 cm (2 inches) long, and exude a pink or purplish dye. Wentletraps occur in all seas, usually near sea anemones, from which they suck nourishment...
  • Wentnor Series (paleontology)
    ...sandstones, conglomerates, and volcanic rocks. Two major subdivisions are recognized: the Western Longmyndian and the underlying Eastern Longmyndian. The Western Longmyndian consists of the Wentnor Series, purple sandstones, conglomerates, and some greenish siltstones and shales; thicknesses of about 4,800 metres (15,700 feet) of Wentnor rocks have been measured. The Eastern Longmyndian......
  • Wentworth, Benning (American politician)
    ...a separate royal province in 1679. Bitter boundary feuds with Massachusetts and New York over the part of the New Hampshire grant that became Vermont continued almost until the American Revolution. Benning Wentworth held the post of colonial governor from 1741 to 1767, the longest tenure of any royal governor in any of the colonies....
  • Wentworth, Cecile de (American artist)
    American painter who established a reputation in Europe for her portraits of important personages....
  • Wentworth Grade Scale (sedimentology)
    ...each size grade differs from its predecessor by the constant ratio of 1:2; each size class has a specific class name used to refer to the particles included within it. This millimetre, or Udden-Wentworth, scale is a geometric grain-size scale since there is a constant ratio between class limits. Such a scheme is well suited for the description of sediments because it gives equal......
  • Wentworth of Wentworth Woodhouse, Viscount Wentworth, Baron (English noble)
    leading adviser of England’s King Charles I. His attempt to consolidate the sovereign power of the king led to his impeachment and execution by Parliament....
  • Wentworth, Paul (English politician)
    ...of Roman Catholicism. The controversy went to the root of society: Was the purpose of life spiritual or political? Was the role of the church to serve God or the crown? In 1576 two brothers, Paul and Peter Wentworth, led the Puritan attack in the Commons, criticizing the queen for her refusal to allow Parliament to debate religious issues. The crisis came to a head in 1586, when Puritans......
  • Wentworth, Peter (English politician)
    prominent Puritan member of the English Parliament in the reign of Elizabeth I, whom he challenged on questions of religion and the succession....
  • Wentworth, Sir Thomas (English noble)
    leading adviser of England’s King Charles I. His attempt to consolidate the sovereign power of the king led to his impeachment and execution by Parliament....
  • Wentworth, W. C. (Australian politician)
    the leading Australian political figure during the first half of the 19th century, whose lifelong work for self-government culminated in the New South Wales constitution of 1855....
  • Wentworth, William, 2nd Earl of Fitzwilliam (British viceroy of Ireland)
    In 1795 Beresford was dismissed from office by the new British viceroy of Ireland, the 2nd Earl Fitzwilliam, who advocated conciliating other Irishmen besides the Protestant landowners. Fitzwilliam, however, was quickly superseded by the 2nd Earl (afterward 1st Marquess) Camden, who began a program of Irish repression that had Beresford’s full approval. Beresford was involved in planning th...
  • Wentworth, William Charles (Australian politician)
    the leading Australian political figure during the first half of the 19th century, whose lifelong work for self-government culminated in the New South Wales constitution of 1855....
  • Wenwang (ruler of Zhou)
    father of Ji Fa (the Wuwang emperor), the founder of the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bc) and one of the sage rulers regarded by Confucian historians as a model king....
  • Wenxian tongkao (work by Ma Duanlin)
    ...and degrees, government, rites and ceremonies, music, the army, law, political geography, national defense. In 1273 it was supplemented by Ma Duanlin’s enormous and highly regarded Wenxian tongkao (“General Study of the Literary Remains”), which included a good bibliography. Supplements to this work were published in the 17th, 18th, and 20th centuries. Under......
  • Wenxiang (Chinese statesman)
    official and statesman in the last years of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12), who took a lead in promoting Western studies, reforming the Chinese government, and introducing Western technology into China....
  • Wenxuan (Chinese literary work)
    ...(“field and garden”) scenes depicted by Tao Qian, his countryman and contemporary. Indeed, Xie’s poems outnumber those of other Six Dynasties poets in the Wenxuan (“Literary Anthology”), the 6th-century canon that defined later Chinese literary tastes....
  • wenyan (Chinese literary language)
    Han Chinese developed more polysyllabic words and more specific verbal and nominal (noun) categories of words. Most traces of verb formation and verb conjugation began to disappear. An independent Southern tradition (on the Yangtze River), simultaneous with Late Archaic Chinese, developed a special style, used in the poetry Chuci (“Elegies of Chu”), which......
  • Wenyuan (Chinese general)
    Chinese general who helped establish the Dong (Eastern) Han dynasty (25–220 ce) after the usurpation of power by the minister Wang Mang ended the Xi (Western) Han dynasty (206 bce–25 ce)....
  • Wenzel (king of Bohemia and Germany)
    German king and, as Wenceslas IV, king of Bohemia, whose weak and tempestuous, though eventful, reign was continually plagued by wars and princely rivalries that he was unable to control, plunging his territories into a state of virtual anarchy until he was stripped of his powers altogether by a rebellious nobility....
  • Wenzel Anton, Prince von Kaunitz-Rietberg (chancellor of Austria)
    Austrian state chancellor during the eventful decades from the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) to the beginning of the coalition wars against revolutionary France (1792). Kaunitz was responsible for the foreign policy of the Habsburg monarchy, and he served as principal adviser on foreign affairs to the empress Maria Theresa and to her successors....
  • Wenzel Bible
    The Wenzel Bible, an Old Testament made between 1389 and 1400, is said to have been ordered by King Wenceslas, and large numbers of 15th-century manuscripts have been preserved....
  • Wenzel, Hanni (Liechtensteiner skier)
    Liechtenstein Alpine skier who was the first athlete from her country to win an Olympic medal, earning a bronze at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria. She went on to win two gold medals and a silver at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, U.S., matching Rosi Mittermaier’s record for the most successful Olympic Alpine skiing perfomance by a woman....
  • Wenzel, Karl von (Holy Roman emperor)
    German king and king of Bohemia (as Charles) from 1346 to 1378 and Holy Roman emperor from 1355 to 1378, one of the most learned and diplomatically skillful sovereigns of his time. He gained more through diplomacy than others did by war, and through purchases, marriages, and inheritance he enlarged his dynastic power. Under Charles’s rule Prague became the political, economic, and cultural ...
  • Wenzheng (Chinese official)
    Chinese administrator, the military leader most responsible for suppressing the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64)—thus staving off the collapse of China’s imperial regime....
  • Wenzheng (Chinese scholar and official)
    Chinese scholar-reformer who, as minister to the Song emperor Renzong (reigned 1022/23–1063/64), anticipated many of the reforms of the great innovator Wang Anshi (1021–86). In his 10-point program raised in 1043, Fan attempted to abolish nepotism and corruption, reclaim unused land, equalize landholdings, create a strong local militia system, re...
  • Wenzhou (China)
    city and port, southeastern Zhejiang sheng (province), southeastern China. It is situated on the south bank of the Ou River, some 19 miles (30 km) from its mouth. The estuary of the Ou River is much obstructed by small islands and mudbanks, but the port is accessible by ships of up to about 1,000 tons. The Ou long provided the main transpo...
  • Wenzinger, Christian (German sculptor)
    ...work and produced a long series of masters, including Johann Georg Übelherr and Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer, whose masterpieces are the Rococo figures at Birnau on Lake Constance. The sculptor Christian Wenzinger worked at Freiburg im Breisgau in relative isolation, but his softly modelled figures have a delicacy that recalls the paintings of Boucher....
  • Wenzong (emperor of Tang dynasty)
    temple name (miaohao) of the 15th emperor (reigned 827–840) of the Tang dynasty (618–907) of China. He attempted unsuccessfully to free the court from the influence of the palace eunuchs, who had usurped much of the imperial power. His carefully laid plots against the eunuchs all misfired, resulting in the Sweet Dew Incident ...
  • Wenzong (emperor of Qing dynasty)
    reign name (nianhao) of the seventh emperor of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1644–1911/12) of China. During his reign (1850–61) China was beset internally by the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64) and externally by conflicts with the encroaching European powers....
  • Weöres, Sándor (Hungarian author)
    Hungarian poet who wrote imaginative lyrical verse that encompassed a wide range of techniques and metric forms....
  • Wepecheange (Indiana, United States)
    city, seat (1834) of Huntington county, central Indiana, U.S. It is located on the Little Wabash River, near its juncture with the Wabash, 24 miles (39 km) southwest of Fort Wayne. The original site (Forks of the Wabash) was a Miami village (home of the Miami chief Jean Baptiste Richardville and his successor, Francis La Fontaine), where many treaties with Native Americans were signed; it was know...
  • Werbőczi, István (Hungarian statesman)
    statesman and jurist, whose codification of Hungarian law served as his country’s basic legal text for more than 400 years....
  • Werchikwar dialect (Asian dialect)
    The somewhat divergent Werchikwār, or Wershikwār, dialect of Burushaski is spoken in the valley of the Yāsīn River in Kashmir....
  • WERD (American radio station)
    Jack the Rapper (Jack Gibson) helped open the first African-American-owned radio station in the United States, WERD in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1949. Gibson learned about radio while working as a gofer for deejay Al Benson in Chicago. He learned even more while at WERD, where he discovered that a white disc jockey received twice the amount of payola (in the form of “consulting fees”)......
  • werden (earth mounds)
    ...that are now the West Frisian Islands. From about ad 400 these low-lying sandflats were inhabited by the Frisians, who in the face of rising sea levels built the first seaworks—dikes and terpen (or werden), mounds to which they retreated during periods of high water. The volume of these terpen ranks them among the great engineering works of humankind....
  • Werden des Gottesglaubens, Das (work by Söderblom)
    Nathan Söderblom, in his prolific scholarly career, devised several classifications other than the principal one discussed above. In his great work on primitive religions, Das Werden des Gottesglaubens (“Development of the Belief in God”), Söderblom divided religions into dynamistic, animistic, and theistic types according to the way primitive peoples apprehend t...
  • Werdnig-Hoffman disease (pathology)
    Hereditary motor neuropathies (also known as spinal muscular atrophies and as Werdnig-Hoffman or Kugelberg-Welander diseases) are a diverse group of genetic disorders in which signs of ventral-horn disease occur in babies or young people. The usual symptoms of muscle atrophy and weakness progress more slowly if the disease begins at a later age (5 to 15 years); at later ages the disease may......
  • were-jaguar (Mesoamerican art)
    The central theme of the Olmec religion was a pantheon of deities each of which usually was a hybrid between jaguar and human infant, often crying or snarling with open mouth. This “were-jaguar” is the hallmark of Olmec art, and it was the unity of objects in this style that first suggested to scholars that they were dealing with a new and previously unknown civilization. There is......
  • weregild (Germanic law)
    (Old English: “man payment”), in ancient Germanic law, the amount of compensation paid by a person committing an offense to the injured party or, in case of death, to his family. In certain instances part of the wergild was paid to the king and to the lord—these having lost, respectively, a subject and a vassal. The wergild was at first informal but was later re...
  • werewolf (folklore)
    in European folklore, a man who turns into a wolf at night and devours animals, people, or corpses but returns to human form by day. Some werewolves change shape at will; others, in whom the condition is hereditary or acquired by having been bitten by a werewolf, change shape involuntarily, under the influence of a full moon. If he is wounded in wolf form, the wounds will show in his human form a...
  • Werfel, Alma (wife of Gustav Mahler)
    wife of Gustav Mahler, known for her relationships with celebrated men....
  • Werfel, Franz (German writer)
    German-language writer who attained prominence as an Expressionist poet, playwright, and novelist and whose works espoused human brotherhood, heroism, and religious faith....
  • Werfen Limestone (rock unit, Europe)
    ...of little value in the dispute, for there the continental Bunter Formation rests unconformably on Upper Permian strata of the Zechstein basin. The marine equivalent of the Bunter in the Alps is the Werfen Limestone; there the distinctive Lower Triassic bivalve genus Claraia is found in apparently conformable contact with the underlying Bellerophon Limestone, in which undisputed.....
  • Wergeland, Henrik Arnold (Norwegian poet)
    Norway’s great national poet, symbol of Norway’s independence, whose humanitarian activity, revolutionary ideas, and love of freedom made him a legendary figure. The clash between his faction (the “patriots”) and the pro-Danish “intelligentsia” led by Johan Welhaven marked the beginning of an ideological conflict that persisted throughou...
  • Wergeland, Jacobine Camilla (Norwegian author)
    novelist and passionate advocate of women’s rights; she wrote the first Norwegian novel dealing critically with the position of women. Its immense influence on later writers—especially Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland—is reflected in the late 19th century, when women’s emancipation became a burning ...
  • wergeld (Germanic law)
    (Old English: “man payment”), in ancient Germanic law, the amount of compensation paid by a person committing an offense to the injured party or, in case of death, to his family. In certain instances part of the wergild was paid to the king and to the lord—these having lost, respectively, a subject and a vassal. The wergild was at first informal but was later re...
  • wergild (Germanic law)
    (Old English: “man payment”), in ancient Germanic law, the amount of compensation paid by a person committing an offense to the injured party or, in case of death, to his family. In certain instances part of the wergild was paid to the king and to the lord—these having lost, respectively, a subject and a vassal. The wergild was at first informal but was later re...
  • Werklein, Josef von (Austrian secretary of state in Parma)
    ...children. Together they governed the duchies more liberally than did most other princes in Italy, though some authorities suggest that this resulted more from weakness of character than from policy. Josef von Werklein, however, who became secretary of state in Parma after Neipperg’s death (1829), pursued a more reactionary policy, and in 1831 a rebellion in Parma forced the duchess to ta...
  • Werkmeister, William H. (American philosopher)
    ...a Kantian himself. The physicist and logician Charles Sanders Peirce owes his Pragmatism largely to Kant’s role as a counterweight against Hegelianism. The former southern California philosopher William H. Werkmeister represents a type of Neo-Kantianism inspired by the Marburg school (The Basis and Structure of Knowledge, 1948)....
  • Werner (vehicle)
    ...was a class for motorcycles in many of the old town-to-town automobile road races, the Paris-Vienna race, for example. The de Dion tricycle dominated the sport in 1897, but two-wheelers like the Werner soon set the stage for an entirely different form of racing. In 1904 the Fédération Internationale du Motocyclisme (renamed the Fédération Internationale......
  • Werner, Abraham Gottlob (German geologist)
    German geologist who founded the Neptunist school, which proclaimed the aqueous origin of all rocks, in opposition to the Plutonists, or Vulcanists, who argued that granite and many other rocks were of igneous origin. Werner rejected uniformitarianism (belief that geological evolution has been a uniform and continuous process)....
  • Werner, Alfred (Swiss chemist)
    Swiss chemist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1913 for his research into the structure of coordination compounds....
  • Werner oder Herz und Welt (work by Gutzkow)
    ...the suppression of all his works. After his release he produced the tragedy Richard Savage (1839), the first in a series of well-constructed and effective plays. His domestic tragedy Werner oder Herz und Welt (1840; “Werner or Heart and World”) long remained in the repertory of the German theatres. Gutzkow also wrote Das Urbild des Tartüffe (1844;......
  • Werner, Pierre (prime minister of Luxembourg)
    Luxembourgian politician (b. Dec. 29, 1913, near Lille, France—d. June 24, 2002, Luxembourg), was hailed as the “father of the euro”; he used his position as prime minister of Luxembourg from 1959 to 1974 and again from 1979 to 1984 to lead the campaign for a single European currency, which he dubbed the “euror” and first publicly advocated in 1960. In 1970 he wa...
  • Werner, Ruth (Soviet spy)
    German-born Soviet espionage agent and writer (b. May 15, 1907, Berlin, Ger.—d. July 7, 2000, Berlin), was a committed communist who operated as a spy for the Soviet Union in China, Nazi Germany, Switzerland, and England beginning in about 1930. Using the code name Sonya, she gathered and transmitted classified intelligence to Moscow, including technical information supplied by the German-b...
  • Werner, Wendelin (French mathematician)
    German-born French mathematician awarded a Fields Medal in 2006 “for his contributions to the development of stochastic Loewner evolution, the geometry of two-dimensional Brownian motion, and conformal theory.”...
  • wernerite (mineral)
    ...meionite, a calcium aluminosilicate, are the theoretical end-members (pure compounds); they have been synthesized but occur in nature only with at least 20 percent substitution of one for the other. Wernerite (the former group name) has been used for members of intermediate composition between marialite and meionite. For chemical formulae and detailed physical properties, see feldspathoi...
  • Werner’s syndrome (pathology)
    ...evidence of senility or of aging in the central nervous system. Two major types of progeria occur: the extremely rare Hutchinson–Gilford syndrome, which has its onset in early childhood, and Werner’s syndrome, which is unrelated and occurs later in life. A third disease, progeria with microphthalmia (the Hallerman–Streiff–François syndrome), in which dwarfism ...
  • Wernham, Bertha (Canadian jurist)
    Canadian jurist who reached the pinnacle of her profession in 1982, when she was appointed the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court of Canada, a post she held until her retirement in 1991. Wilson graduated with an M.A. (1944) from the University of Abderdeen, Scot., and in 1949 she immigrated to Canada with her husband, an ordained minister. After Wilson earned a law degree (1958) from Dalho...
  • Wernher der Gartenaere (German poet)
    The poem is about 1,900 lines in length and was written in the region of the Austrian-Bavarian border by Wernher der Gartenaere (Gärtner), who includes his name in the poem’s last line....
  • Wernher der Gärtner (German poet)
    The poem is about 1,900 lines in length and was written in the region of the Austrian-Bavarian border by Wernher der Gartenaere (Gärtner), who includes his name in the poem’s last line....
  • Wernicke aphasia (pathology)
    ...to comprehend speech but have great difficulty expressing their thoughts. People with Broca aphasia speak in short phrases that include only nouns and verbs (telegraphic speech). Individuals with Wernicke aphasia, which may result from damage to the temporal lobe, speak in long, garbled sentences (word salad) and have poor speech comprehension. Global aphasia may result from extensive brain......
  • Wernicke area (anatomy)
    ...characterized by deliberate, telegraphic speech with very simple grammatical structure, though the speaker may be quite clear as to what he wishes to say and may communicate successfully. The Wernicke area is in the superior part of the posterior temporal lobe; it is close to the auditory cortex and is considered to be the receptive language, or language-comprehension, centre. An......
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