an early form of French lyric poetry dating from the beginning of the 12th century. The poems consisted of short monorhyme stanzas with a refrain. Chanson de toile is derived ...
fixed form of verse developed by French poets of the 13th to the 15th century. Its standard form consisted in the 14th century of five stanzas of from 8 to ...
a medieval tale of adventure told in alternating sections of sung verse and recited prose. The word itself was used-and perhaps coined-by the anonymous author of the 13th-century French work ...
town, eastern Thailand. Chanthaburi is a commercial centre near the mouth of the Chanthaburi River, serving the region's pepper, rubber, fruit, and coffee plantations. The Chanthaburi Range is to the ...
ruler of the Lao kingdom of Luang Prabang who was confronted by increasingly serious local, regional, and international threats to his state's survival.
residential town and tourist centre, Oise departement, Picardie region, France, 26 miles (42 km) north of Paris by road. Situated near the forest of ...
lace made at Chantilly, Oise departement, north of Paris. Lace was made there from the 17th century, but the silk laces for which Chantilly was famous date from the 18th ...
celebrated soft-paste porcelain produced from 1725 to c. 1789 by a factory established in the Prince de Conde's chateau at Chantilly, Fr. Two periods can be distinguished, according to the ...
prolific early 19th-century English sculptor. Of his many works, he considered his sculpture "Lady Frederica Stanhope at Chevening Church" (1824) to be the best. He began his career as a ...
chapel, generally within a church, endowed for the singing of masses for the founder after his death. The practice of founding chantries, or chantry chapels, in western Europe began during ...
city, Neosho county, southeastern Kansas, U.S., on the Neosho River. Settled c. 1870 and named for Octave Chanute, a civil engineer and aviation pioneer, the settlement developed as a trading ...
) of Chinese history. In 403 Chao Chi, the founder of Chao, and the leaders of the states of Wei and Han partitioned the state of Chin. The state of ...
Chinese trade official whose two-volume work Chu fan chih ("Description of the Barbarians") is one of the best-known and most wide-ranging accounts of foreign places and goods at the time ...
Chinese eunuch who conspired to seize power on the death of Shih Huang-ti, first emperor of the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 BC). His action eventually led to the downfall of the ...
principal river of Thailand. It flows south through the nation's fertile central plain for more than 225 miles (365 km) to the Gulf of Thailand. Thailand's capitals, past and present ...
city in western Kwangtung sheng (province), China. Chao-ch'ing lies on the north bank of the Hsi River, 50 miles (80 km) west of Canton, just above the famous Ling-yang Gorge, ...
in early Greek cosmology, either the primeval emptiness of the universe before things came into being or the abyss of Tartarus, the underworld. Both concepts occur in the Theogony of ...
in mechanics and mathematics, apparently random or unpredictable behaviour in systems governed by deterministic laws. A more accurate term, "deterministic chaos," suggests a paradox because it connects two notions that ...
lake, west-central Mexico. It lies on the central plateau at 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above sea level in Jalisco and Michoacan states. Chapala is Mexico's largest lake, measuring approximately 48 ...
vegetation composed of broad-leaved evergreen shrubs, bushes, and small trees usually less than 2.5 m (about 8 feet) tall; together they often form dense thickets. Chaparral is found in regions ...
city, Samara oblast (province), western Russia, on the Chapayevka River, a tributary of the Volga. Formerly a centre of the defense industry specializing in explosives, it now concentrates on nitrogen ...
small, inexpensive stitched tract formerly sold by itinerant dealers, or chapmen, in western Europe and in North America. Most chapbooks were 5 12 by 4 14 inches (14 by 11 ...
small, intimate place of worship. The name was originally applied to the shrine in which the kings of France preserved the cape (late Latin cappella, diminutive of cappa) of St. ...
town, Orange county, central North Carolina, U.S., about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Durham and some 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Raleigh; with these two cities it constitutes ...
originally a priest or minister who had charge of a chapel, now an ordained member of the clergy who is assigned to a special ministry. The title dates to the ...
British comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture history.
American ornithologist famous for his extensive and detailed studies of the life histories, geographic distribution, and systematic relationships of North and South American birds.
British comedian and writer, founding member of the Monty Python Flying Circus troupe, which set a standard during the 1970s for its quirky parodies and wacky humour on television and ...
missionary nurseryman of the North American frontier who helped prepare the way for 19th-century pioneers by supplying apple-tree nursery stock throughout the Middle West.
American poet, dramatist, and critic who attacked the get-rich-quick morality of the post-Civil War "Gilded Age" in political action and in his writings. Ancestors on both sides of his family ...
town, administrative headquarters of Saran district, Bihar state, northeastern India, near the junction of the Ghaghara and Ganges rivers. Chapra grew in importance as a river mart in the 18th ...
chamber or building, often reached through the cloister, in which the chapter, or heads of monastic bodies, assemble to transact business. Chapter houses occur in various forms. In England the ...
rocky hill about 200 feet (60 metres) high on the western edge of Mexico City that has long played a prominent role in the history of Mexico. The Aztecs fortified ...
zoo located in Mexico City on the original site of Montezuma's game reserve. Opened in 1926, the zoo is administered by the municipal government. Its grounds cover 13.5 hectares (33 ...
(Salvelinus), any of several freshwater food and game fishes distinguished from the similar trout by light, rather than black, spots and by a boat-shaped bone (vomer) that is toothed only ...
French poet who began as a Surrealist but who, after his experiences as a Resistance leader in World War II, wrote economical verse with moralistic overtones.
(from French char a bancs: "wagon with benches"), long, four-wheeled carriage with several rows of forward-facing seats, originated in France in the early 19th century. It was pulled by up ...
any of the numerous freshwater fishes of the family Characidae. Hundreds of species of characins are found in Central and South America, a smaller number in tropical Africa. Characins are ...
in biology, any observable feature, or trait, of an organism, whether acquired or inherited. An acquired character is a response to the environment; an inherited character is produced by genes ...
relatively brief musical composition, usually for piano, expressive of a specific mood or nonmusical idea. Closely associated with the Romantic movement, especially in Germany, 19th-century character pieces often bore titles ...
any writer who produced a type of character sketch that was popular in 17th-century England and France. Their writings stemmed from a series of character sketches that the Greek philosopher ...
a name of a fictional character that suggests a distinctive trait of that character. Examples of charactonyms include Mistress Quickly and Sir Toby Belch.
originally a kind of riddle, probably invented in France during the 18th century, in which a word or phrase is divined by guessing and combining its different syllables, each of ...
(order Charadriiformes), any of the group that includes the shorebirds, gulls (see ), auks, and their relatives. These birds form an important and familiar segment of the avifauna of the ...
French-Canadian poet who was the primary force behind the founding of the Montreal Literary School (1895), a group of symbolists and aesthetes who reacted against the traditional Canadian themes of ...
impure form of graphitic carbon (q.v.), obtained as a residue when carbonaceous material is partially burned, or heated with limited access of air. Coke, carbon black (qq.v.), and soot may ...
use of charred sticks of wood to make finished drawings and preliminary studies. The main characteristic of charcoal as a medium is that, unless it is fixed by the application ...
(species Beta vulgaris variety cicla), an edible leaf beet, a variety of the beet of the goosefoot family (Chenopodiaceae), in which the leaves and leafstalks, instead of the roots, have ...
French painter of still lifes and domestic scenes remarkable for their intimate realism and tranquil atmosphere and the luminous quality of their paint. For his still lifes he chose humble ...
oblast (province), southeastern Turkmenistan, with an area of 36,200 square miles (93,800 square km). It lies along the middle reaches of the Amu Darya (river), with the Kara-Kum Desert on ...
city and administrative centre, Chardzhou oblast (province), Turkmenistan, on the Amu Darya (river). The second largest city in Turkmenistan, it was founded as a Russian military settlement when the Transcaspian ...
river in western France, about 225 miles (360 km) long, rising near Rochechouart in the Limousin uplands (Haute-Vienne departement), on the margin of the Massif Central, and flowing generally westward ...
ancient Greek sculptor who created the Colossus of Rhodes, usually counted among the Seven Wonders of the World. A pupil of the sculptor Lysippus, Chares fashioned for the Rhodians a ...
any entity having electric charge, the motion of which constitutes an electric current. In metals the charge (or current) carriers are free electrons, common negative subatomic particles. In gases and ...
in particle physics, an operation that replaces particles with antiparticles (and vice versa) in equations describing subatomic particles. The name charge conjugation arises because a given particle and its antiparticle ...
