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Desert Rats ... Deuteronomy

Desert Rats: a group of British soldiers who helped defeat the Germans in North Africa during World War II. The Desert Rats, led by General Allen Francis Harding, were especially noted for ...
desert varnish: thin, dark red to black mineral coating (generally iron and manganese oxides and silica) deposited on pebbles and rocks on the surface of desert regions. As dew and soil moisture ...
desertification: spread or encroachment of a desert environment into arid or semiarid regions, caused by climatic changes, human influence, or both. Climatic factors include periods of temporary but severe drought and ...
Desgarcins, Magdeleine-Marie: original name Louise Desgarcins one of the greatest of French tragediennes.
Deshoulieres, Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde: French poet who, from 1672 until her death, presided over a salon that was a meeting place for the prominent literary figures of her day. She was also a leader ...
Desiderio Da Settignano: Florentine sculptor whose works, particularly his marble low reliefs, were unrivaled in the 15th century for subtlety and technical accomplishment.
design: see industrial design; interior design. See also advertising; architecture; typography; and other subject areas in which design is fundamental.
designer drugs: in popular usage, illegal synthetic, laboratory-made chemicals. Although the term is not precisely defined, it is understood to refer to commonly abused drugs such as fentanyl, ketamine, LSD, PCP, quaaludes, ...
Desio: town, Milano provincia, Lombardia (Lombardy) regione, northern Italy. The town's name derives from the Latin ad decimum, Desio being 10 (decimus) Roman miles north of Milan on the road to ...
Desiosi, Compagnia dei: one of the Italian acting troupes performing commedia dell'arte (improvised popular comedy) in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This period is considered the golden age of the genre, ...
Desirade, La: island in the middle of the windward group of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea and a dependency of Guadeloupe, an overseas departement of France. It lies 6 miles ...
Desjardins, Pete: American diver who won a silver medal in the springboard at the 1924 Olympics in Paris and gold medals in the springboard and platform events at the 1928 Games in ...
desk: a table, frame, or case with a sloping or horizontal top particularly designed to aid writing or public reading, and often containing drawers, compartments, or pigeonholes.
Deskey, Donald: American industrial designer who helped establish industrial design as a profession.
desktop publishing: the use of a personal computer to perform publishing tasks that would otherwise require much more complicated equipment and human effort. Desktop publishing allows an individual to combine text, numerical ...
Deslandres, Henri-Alexandre: French physicist and astrophysicist who in 1894 invented a spectroheliograph, an instrument that photographs the Sun in monochromatic light. (About a year earlier George E. Hale had independently invented a ...
desman: either of two species of amphibious Eurasian moles that den on land but seek prey underwater instead of burrowing through soil. The protruding flexible snout is flat and grooved with ...
Desmarest, Nicolas: French geologist whose discovery of the volcanic origin of basalt disproved the Neptunist theory that all rocks were formed by sedimentation from primeval oceans.
Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, Jean: French prose writer, poet, dramatist, Christian polemicist, and political figure. One of the original members and the first chancellor of the French Academy, Desmarets opened the long literary battle, since ...
Desmarets, Nicolas, Marquis De Maillebois: minister of finance during the last seven years of the reign (1643-1715) of Louis XIV of France.
desmid: any of the beautiful, single-celled (sometimes filamentous or colonial), microscopic green algae of the order Zygnematales, class Chlorophyta, characterized by extensive variation in cell shape. Typically the cell is divided ...
Desmond: an ancient territorial division of Ireland approximating the modern counties of Kerry and Cork. Between the 11th and 17th centuries, the name was often used for two quite distinct areas. ...
Desmond, Gerald Fitzgerald, 14th earl of: Irish Roman Catholic nobleman who led one of the three major Irish rebellions against English rule under Queen Elizabeth I.
Desmoulins, Camille: one of the most influential journalists and pamphleteers of the French Revolution.
Desnos, Robert: French poet who joined Andre Breton in the early Surrealist movement, soon becoming one of its most valuable members because of his ability to fall into a hypnotic trance, under ...
Desnoyers, Auguste-Gaspard-Louis, Baron: French engraver, one of the most eminent line engravers of his time. Desnoyers studied engraving and drawing and, after visiting Italy, entered the studio of Pierre-Alexandre Tardieu in 1800. His ...
Despard, Edward Marcus: British army officer and colonial administrator and organizer of a conspiracy against the British government. Despard entered the army in 1766 and attained the rank of colonel. After serving in ...
Despenser, Hugh Le; and Despenser, Hugh Le: unpopular favourites of England's King Edward II, who were executed by Edward's opponents, Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.
Despiau, Charles: French sculptor and illustrator who is best known for portrait busts executed in a sensitive and classical style.
Desportes, Alexandre-Francois: French painter who specialized in portraying animals, hunts, and emblems of the chase; he was among the first 18th-century artists to introduce landscape studies using nature as a model.
Desportes, Philippe: French courtier poet whose light, facile verse prepared the way for the new taste of the 17th century in France and whose sonnets served as models for the late Elizabethan ...
Desprez, Louis-Jean: French painter, stage designer, architect, and engraver, an important figure in the transition from the rational Neoclassicism of the mid-18th century in France to the more subjective and innovative pre-Romantic ...
Desrosiers, Leo-Paul: French-Canadian writer best known for his historical novels.
Dessalines, Jean-Jacques: emperor of Haiti who proclaimed his country's independence in 1804.
Dessau: city, Saxony-Anhalt Land (state), east-central Germany. It lies on the Mulde River at its confluence with the Elbe River, northeast of Halle. The German town, which developed ...
Dessau, Paul: German composer and conductor best known for his operas and other vocal works written in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht. Dessau's conducting career included posts in Cologne (1919-23) and Berlin (1925-33). ...
dessert: the last course of a meal. In the United States dessert is likely to consist of pastry, cake, ice cream, pudding, or fresh or cooked fruit. British meals traditionally end ...
Dessoir, Ludwig: German actor whose fame rested on his portrayals of Shakespearean characters.
Destinn, Emmy: Czech soprano noted for the power and vibrant richness of her voice and for her great intelligence and dramatic gifts. She adopted the name of her singing teacher, Maria Loewe-Destinn.
Destouches, Andre Cardinal: French opera composer who brought an original touch to the genres of the day.
Destouches, Philippe Nericault: dramatist who brought to the tradition of French classical comedy influences derived from the English Restoration theatre.
Destour: Tunisian political party, especially active in the 1920s and '30s in arousing Tunisian national consciousness and opposition to the French protectorate.
destroyer: fast naval vessel that has served a variety of functions since the late 19th century. The term destroyer was first used for the 250-ton vessels built in the 1890s to ...
Destutt de Tracy, Antoine-Louis-Claude, Comte: French philosopher, soldier, and chief Ideologue, so called for the philosophical school of Ideologie, which he founded.
DESY: the largest centre for high-energy particle-physics research in Germany. DESY, founded in 1959, is located in Hamburg and is funded jointly by the German federal government and the city of ...
detached retina: eye disorder involving separation of most layers of the retina, the light-sensitive layer of tissue that lines the back and sides of the eye, from the choroid, the pigmented middle ...
Detaille, Edouard: French painter known for his accurate portrayals of battles and military life.
detection: in electronics, the process of rectifying a radio wave and recovering any information superimposed on it; it is essentially the reverse of modulation (q.v.).
detective story: type of popular literature dealing with the step-by-step investigation and solution of a crime, usually murder.
detergent: any of various surface-active agents (surfactants) particularly effective in dislodging foreign matter from soiled surfaces and retaining it in suspension. The term usually denotes a synthetic substance that is not ...
determinant: in genetics, the term used in the late 19th century by the German biologist August Weismann to describe the component of hereditary material, or germ plasm, that specifies the characteristics ...
determinant: in linear and multilinear algebra, a value, denoted det A, associated with a square matrix A of n rows and n columns. Designating any element of the matrix by the ...
determinism: in philosophy, theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes that preclude free will and the possibility that humans could have acted otherwise. The ...
deterrence: military strategy under which one power uses the threat of reprisal effectively to preclude an attack from an adversary power. With the advent of nuclear weapons, the term deterrence largely ...
Detmold: city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), northwestern Germany. It lies on the eastern slope of the Teutoburg Forest (Teutoburger Wald), on the Werre River. The capital, from the ...
Detrez, Conrad: Belgian novelist of political conscience and an energetic, darkly humorous style.
Detroit: city, seat of Wayne county, southeastern Michigan, U.S., on the Detroit River (connecting Lakes Erie and St. Clair), opposite Windsor, Ont., Can. It was founded in 1701 by a French ...
Detroit Free Press: daily newspaper, one of the most widely circulated in the United States, published in Detroit, Michigan.
Detroit Institute of Arts: art museum in Detroit, Mich., noted for its collection of American paintings from the 19th century and its Dutch, Flemish, and Italian paintings from the Renaissance through the Baroque periods. ...
Detroit Mercy, University of: private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Detroit, Mich., U.S. It is affiliated with the Jesuits and the Religious Sisters of Mercy of the Roman Catholic church. The university offers ...
Detroit River: river forming part of the boundary between Michigan, U.S. (west), and Ontario, Can. (east), and connecting Lake St. Clair (north) with the west end of Lake Erie (south). The river ...
Detti Falls: waterfall, northeastern Iceland, on the island's second longest river, Jokulsa a Fjollum. The Detti Falls have a vertical drop of 144 feet (44 m). It is the largest Icelandic waterfall ...
Deucalion: in Greek legend, the son of Prometheus (the creator of mankind), king of Phthia in Thessaly, and husband of Pyrrha; he was also the father of Hellen, the mythical ancestor ...
Deulino, Truce of: (December 1618), agreement suspending for 14 12 years the hostilities between Poland and Russia that resulted from Polish intervention in Russia during the Time of Troubles (1606-13). In 1609, during ...
deus ex machina: a person or thing that appears or is introduced into a situation suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial or contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.
deus otiosus: (Latin: "neutral god," or "hidden god"), in the history of religions and philosophy, a high god who has withdrawn from the immediate details of the governing of the world. The ...
Deus, Joao de: lyric poet who fashioned a simple, direct, and expressive language that revitalized Portuguese Romantic poetry. He was a major influence on Portuguese literature of the early 20th century.
Deusdedit, Saint: also called Deusdedit I, or Adeodatus I pope from 615 to 618. His pontificate is chiefly noteworthy for an unsuccessful resumption of the Byzantine war against the Lombards in Italy ...
deuterium: isotope of hydrogen with atomic weight of approximately 2. Its nucleus, consisting of one proton and one neutron, has double the mass of the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen. Deuterium is ...
Deutero-Isaiah: section of the Old Testament Book of Isaiah (chapters 40-55) that is later in origin than the preceding chapters, though not as late as the following chapters. See Isaiah, Book ...
deuterocanonical books: biblical literature accepted in the Roman canon but treated as apocryphal by Jewish and Protestant canons; also, an authentic biblical work added to the canon later. See apocrypha.
Deuteromycetes: artificial assemblage, or form-class, of fungi (kingdom Mycota) in which a true sexual state is uncommon or unknown. Many of these fungi reproduce asexually by spores (conidia or oidia) or ...
deuteron: nucleus of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) that consists of one proton and one neutron. Deuterons are formed chiefly by ionizing deuterium (stripping the single electron away from the atom) and are ...
Deuteronomic Reform: great religious reformation instituted in the reign of King Josiah of Judah (c. 640-609 BC). It was so called because the book of the Law found in the Temple of ...
Deuteronomist: (D), one of the supposed sources of a portion of the Hebrew canon known as the Pentateuch, in particular, the source of the book of Deuteronomy, as well as of ...
Deuteronomy: ("Words"), fifth book of the Old Testament, written in the form of a farewell address by Moses to the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land of Canaan. The speeches ...