ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0-9
Dera Ismail Khan ... desert pavement
Dera Ismail Khan
town, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, just west of the Indus River. The town was named for Isma'il Khan, son of the 15th-century Balochi chief who founded it. The old town, ...
Derain, Andre
French painter, sculptor, printmaker, and designer who was one of the principal Fauvists.
derasha
in Judaism, a homily or sermon, generally preached by a rabbi in the synagogue.
Derbent
city, Dagestan republic, southwestern Russia. The city lies in the narrow gap between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains at their closest approach. Derbent was founded in AD 438 ...
Derby
town and port in West Kimberley shire, northern Western Australia. It lies on the western shore of a peninsula in King Sound (an inlet of the Indian Ocean), near the ...
Derby
one of the classic English horse races, with the Saint Leger, the Oaks, the One Thousand Guineas, and the Two Thousand Guineas. It dates from 1780 and is named for ...
Derby
city, coextensive with the town (township) of Derby, New Haven county, southwestern Connecticut, U.S. It lies at the junction of the Housatonic and Naugatuck rivers, a few miles west of ...
Derby
city and unitary authority, geographic and historic county of Derbyshire, England. It lies along the River Derwent at an important route focus at the southern end of the Pennines. The ...
Derby ware
porcelain figures and servicewares made in Derby, central England, about 1750-1848. The best-known early figures were characterized by glaze retractions about the base. Known as "dry-edge" figures, their modeling and ...
Derby, Edward Stanley, 14th earl of
English statesman, important as leader of the Conservative Party during the long period 1846-68, thrice prime minister, and one of England's greatest parliamentary orators; nevertheless, he has no great political ...
Derby, Edward Stanley, 3rd earl of
second son of the 2nd earl, succeeding to the earldom on his father's death in May 1521. During his minority Cardinal Wolsey was his guardian, and as soon as he ...
Derby, James Stanley, 7th earl of
prominent Royalist commander in the English Civil War, who was executed by the Parliamentarians.
Derby, Thomas Stanley, 1st earl of
a prominent figure in the later stage of England's Wars of the Roses.
Derby, William Stanley, 6th earl of
English writer and patron of the theatre who has been offered by some theorists as the true author of the plays of William Shakespeare.
Derbyshire
administrative, geographic, and historic county in the East Midlands of England. The landscape varies from the bleak moorlands of the northern Peak District to the Trent lowlands in the south, ...
Derbyshire Dales
district, administrative and historic county of Derbyshire, England. About half of the district lies within the scenic Peak District National Park.
derebey
(Turkish: "valley lord"), any of several feudal lords in Anatolia who, from the early 18th century, became virtually independent of the Ottoman central government. After these feudatories disappeared in the ...
Derekh Eretz
(Hebrew: "correct conduct," or "way of the land"), in Judaism, the decorum, dignified behaviour, and gentlemanly conduct that should characterize a Jew at all times. Rabbinic scholars have applied the ...
Deren, Maya
influential director and performer who is often called the "mother" of American avant-garde filmmaking. Her films are not only poetic but instructive, offering insight into the human body and pysche ...
Derg, Lough
lake on the River Shannon, situated at the boundary of Counties Tipperary, Galway, and Clare, in Ireland. Lough Derg is 24 miles (39 km) long and 0.5 to 8 miles ...
Deringer, Henry
American gunsmith who was the inventor of the Derringer pistol. He was the son of Henry Deringer, Sr., a colonial gunsmith who made Kentucky rifles.
derivation
in descriptive linguistics and traditional grammar, the formation of a word by changing the form of the base or by adding affixes to it. In this sense, derivation is also ...
derivative
in mathematics, the rate of change, or instantaneous velocity, of a function with respect to a variable.
dermatitis
an inflammation of the skin usually characterized by redness, swelling, blister formation, and oozing and almost always by itching. The term eczema, which formerly referred to the blistered, oozing state ...
dermatology
medical specialty dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the skin. Dermatology developed as a subspecialty of internal medicine in the 18th century; it was initially combined with ...
dermatomyositis
chronic progressive inflammation of the skin and muscles, particularly the muscles of the shoulders and pelvis.
dermestid beetle
any member of the approximately 700 species of the widely distributed insect family Dermestidae (order Coleoptera). These important household pests are usually brown or black, although some are brightly coloured ...
dermis
the thicker, deeper layer of the skin underlying the epidermis and made up of connective tissue. It is present in varying degrees of development among various vertebrate groups, being relatively ...
Dermot Macmurrough
Irish Diarmaid Macmurchada Irish king of Leinster whose appeal to the English for help in settling an internal dispute led to the Anglo-Norman invasion and conquest of Ireland by England.
Dermout, Maria
Dutch novelist and short-story writer known for her subtle and evocative portraits of colonial life in the Dutch East Indies.
DeRoburt, Hammer
Nauruan politician who was at the centre of political life on the central Pacific island for more than 30 years, notably as the first elected president of Nauru following its ...
Derozio, Henry Louis Vivian
poet and assistant headmaster of Hindu College, Calcutta, a radical thinker and one of the first Indian educators to disseminate Western learning and science among the young men of Bengal.
derrick
apparatus with a tackle rigged at the end of a beam for hoisting and lowering. Its name is derived from that of a famous early 17th-century hangman of Tyburn, Eng. ...
Derrida, Jacques
French philosopher whose critique of Western philosophy and analyses of the nature of language, writing, and meaning were highly controversial yet immensely influential in much of the intellectual world in ...
derringer
pocket pistol produced in the early 19th century by Henry Deringer (q.v.), a Philadelphia gunsmith.
Derry
town (township), Rockingham county, southeastern New Hampshire, U.S., on Beaver Brook just southeast of Manchester. It includes the communities of Derry and East Derry. The town, set off from Londonderry ...
Deruta ware
outstanding tin-glazed earthenware, or majolica, produced during the first half of the 16th century in the town of Deruta on the Tiber River, near Perugia, Italy. Deruta ware is characterized ...
dervish
any member of a Sufi (Muslim mystic) fraternity, or tariqa. Within the Sufi fraternities, which were first organized in the 12th century, an established leadership and a prescribed discipline obliged ...
Derwent River
river in Tasmania, Australia, rising in Lake St. Clair on the central plateau and flowing 113 miles (182 km) southeast to enter Storm Bay through a 3.5-mile- (5.5-kilometre-) wide estuary. ...
Derwent Water
lake, administrative county of Cumbria, historic county of Cumberland, England, in the Lake District National Park. It is about 3 miles (5 km) long and from 0.5 to 1.25 miles ...
Derwent, River
river in North Yorkshire, England, that rises on Fylingdales Moor only 6 miles (10 km) inland from the North Sea but flows 57 miles (92 km) through alternating gorges and ...
Derwentside
district, administrative and historic county of Durham, northeastern England, located in the north-central part of the county about 12 miles (20 km) southwest of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. ...
Derzhavin, Gavrila Romanovich
Russia's greatest and most original 18th-century poet, whose finest achievements lie in his lyrics and odes.
Des Moines
city, capital of Iowa, U.S., and seat (1845) of Polk county. The city lies on the Des Moines River at its juncture with the Raccoon River in the south-central part ...
Des Moines Register, The
morning daily newspaper published in Des Moines, Iowa, one of the most influential regional newspapers in the United States.
Des Moines River
river rising in Lake Shetek in southwestern Minnesota, U.S., near Pipestone, and flowing 525 mi (845 km) in a southeasterly direction to join the Mississippi River 2 mi southwest of ...
Des Periers, Bonaventure
French storyteller and humanist who attained notoriety as a freethinker.
Des Plaines
city, Cook county, northeastern Illinois, U.S. Lying on the Des Plaines River, it is a suburb of Chicago, 17 miles (27 km) northwest of downtown. The area was originally inhabited ...
Des Plaines River
river rising in Kenosha county, southeastern Wisconsin, U.S., and flowing south into Illinois through the northwestern suburbs of Chicago to Lyons. It then continues southwest past Lockport and Joliet, where ...
Desai, Anita
English-language Indian novelist and author of children's books, considered India's premier imagist writer. She excelled in evoking character and mood through visual images ranging from the meteorologic to the botanical.
Desai, Morarji
prime minister of India (1977-79), first leader of sovereign India not to represent the long-ruling Congress Party.
Desaix de Veygoux, Louis-Charles-Antoine
French military hero who led forces in the German, Egyptian, and Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars (from 1792).
desalination
the removal of dissolved salts from seawater and in some cases from the brackish waters of inland seas, highly mineralized groundwaters (e.g., geothermal brines), and municipal waste waters. This process ...
Desargues's theorem
in geometry, mathematical statement discovered by the French mathematician Girard Desargues in 1639 that motivated the development, in the first quarter of the 19th century, of projective geometry by another ...
Desargues, Girard
French mathematician who figures prominently in the history of projective geometry. Desargues's work was well known by his contemporaries, but half a century after his death he was forgotten. His ...
Desbordes-Valmore, Marceline
French poet and woman of letters of the Romantic period.
Desborough, John
English soldier, Oliver Cromwell's brother-in-law, who played a prominent part in Commonwealth politics.
descamisado
(Spanish: "shirtless one"), in Argentine history, during the regime of dictator Juan Peron (ruled 1946-55, 1973-74), any of the impoverished and underprivileged Argentine workers who were Peron's chief supporters.
descant
countermelody either composed or improvised above a familiar melody. Descant can also refer to an instrument of higher-than-normal pitch, such as a descant recorder. In late medieval music, discantus referred ...
Descartes, Rene
French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. Because he was one of the first to abandon scholastic Aristotelianism, because he formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism, from which stems the ...
descent
the system of acknowledged social parentage, which varies from society to society, whereby a person may claim kinship ties with another. If no limitation were placed on the recognition of ...
Deschamps, Emile
poet prominent in the development of Romanticism.
Deschamps, Eustache
poet and author of L'Art de dictier (1392), the first treatise on French versification.
Deschanel, Paul
French political figure who was an important parliamentary leader during the Third Republic and served as its 10th president (Feb. 17 to Sept. 20, 1920).
descloizite
vanadate mineral containing lead, copper, and zinc that usually forms brownish red to blackish brown crusts of intergrown crystals or rounded fibrous masses; its physical appearance is varied, however, and ...
descort
a synonym for lai, a medieval Provencal lyric in which the stanzas are nonuniform. The term also refers to a poem in medieval Provencal literature with stanzas in different languages. ...
Dese
town, central Ethiopia, situated on the western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley at an elevation of 7,500 feet (2,300 m). Dese (Amharic: "My Joy") is a commercial and communications ...
Deseado River
river in southern Argentina, rising in Buenos Aires Lake in the Andes of southern Chile and Argentina. It flows generally eastward and southeastward through Santa Cruz province. Near Koluel Kayke ...
desensitization
treatment that attempts to eliminate allergic reactions, as of hay fever or bronchial asthma, by a series of injections in graded strengths of the substance to which the person is ...
Deseret News, The
daily newspaper published in Salt Lake City, Utah, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). It was founded as a biweekly in 1850. The word Deseret means ...
desert
any large, extremely dry area of land with sparse vegetation. It is one of the Earth's major types of ecosystems, supporting a community of distinctive plants and animals specially adapted ...
Desert cultures
in North America, ancient cultures centred on the Great Basin in the area of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona; they lasted from about 7000 or 8000 BC to about 2000 BC. ...
desert dormouse
a rarely seen or captured small rodent of Central Asia. Weighing less than 28 grams (1 ounce), the desert dormouse has a stout rounded body 8 to 10 cm (3.1 ...
Desert Fathers
early Christian hermits whose practice of asceticism in the Egyptian desert, beginning in the 3rd century, formed the basis of Christian monasticism. One of these hermits, Pachomius of the Thebaid ...
desert palace
any country dwelling built in Syria, Jordan, and Palestine by Umayyad (AD 661-750) rulers and aristocrats.
desert pavement
surface of angular, interlocking fragments of pebbles, gravel, or boulders in arid areas. Desert pavement forms on level or gently sloping desert flats, fans, or bajadas and lake and river ...