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food additive: any of various chemical substances added to foods to produce specific desirable effects. Additives such as salt, spices, and sulfites have been used since ancient times to preserve foods and ...
Food and Agriculture Organization: oldest permanent specialized agency of the United Nations, established in October 1945 with the objective of eliminating hunger and improving nutrition and standards of living by increasing agricultural productivity.
Food and Drug Administration: agency of the U.S. federal government authorized by Congress to inspect, test, approve, and set safety standards for foods and food additives, drugs, chemicals, cosmetics, and household and medical devices. ...
food chain: in ecology, the sequence of transfers of matter and energy from organism to organism in the form of food. Food chains intertwine locally into a food web because most organisms ...
food colouring: any of numerous dyes, pigments, or other additives used to enhance the appearance of fresh and processed foods. Colouring ingredients include natural colours, derived primarily from vegetable sources and sometimes ...
food poisoning: acute gastrointestinal illness resulting from the consumption of foods containing one or more representatives of three main groups of harmful agents: natural poisons present in certain plants and animals, chemical ...
food preservation: any of a number of methods by which food is kept from spoilage after harvest or slaughter. Such practices date to prehistoric times. Among the oldest methods of preservation are ...
food processing: any of a variety of operations by which raw foodstuffs are made suitable for consumption, cooking, or storage.
food processor: electric appliance developed in the late 20th century, used for a variety of food-preparation functions including kneading, chopping, blending, and pulverizing.
fool: a comic entertainer whose madness or imbecility, real or pretended, made him a source of amusement and gave him license to abuse and poke fun at even the most exalted ...
fool's literature: allegorical satires popular throughout Europe from the 15th to the 17th century, featuring the fool (q.v.), or jester, who represented the weaknesses, vices, and grotesqueries of contemporary society. The first ...
Fools, Feast of: popular festival during the Middle Ages, held on or about January 1, particularly in France, in which a mock bishop or pope was elected, ecclesiastical ritual was parodied, and low ...
foot: in measurement, any of numerous ancient, medieval, and modern linear measures (commonly 25 to 34 cm) based on the length of the human foot and used exclusively in English-speaking countries, ...
foot: in anatomy, terminal part of the leg of a land vertebrate, on which the creature stands. In most two-footed and many four-footed animals it consists of all structures below the ...
foot: in verse, the smallest metrical unit of measurement. The prevailing kind and number of feet, revealed by scansion, determines the metre of a poem. In classical (or quantitative) verse, a ...
Foot, Hugh: British diplomat who led British colonies to their independence.
Foot, Michael: leader of Britain's Labour Party from November 1980 to October 1983, an intellectual left-wing socialist.
foot-and-mouth disease: a highly contagious viral disease affecting practically all cloven-footed domesticated mammals, including cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Wild herbivores such as bison, deer, antelopes, reindeer, giraffes, and llamas are also ...
football: game in which two teams of 11 players, using any part of their bodies except their hands and arms, try to maneuver the ball into the opposing team's goal. Only ...
football: any of a number of related games, all of which are characterized by two persons or teams attempting to kick, carry, throw, or otherwise propel a ball toward an opponent's ...
Football Association: ruling body for English football (soccer), founded in 1863. The FA controls every aspect of the organized game, both amateur and professional, and is responsible for national competitions, including the ...
Football League: English professional football (soccer) organization. The league was formed in 1888, largely through the efforts of William McGregor, known afterward as the "father of the league." Twelve of the strongest ...
football, gridiron: version of the sport of football so named for the vertical yard lines marking the rectangular field. Gridiron football evolved from English rugby and soccer (association football); it differs from ...
Foote, Andrew: American naval officer especially noted for his service during the American Civil War.
Foote, Mary Anna Hallock: American novelist and illustrator whose vivid literary and artistic productions drew on life in the mining communities of the American West.
Foote, Robert Bruce: British geologist and archaeologist, often considered to be the founder of the study of the prehistory of India.
Foote, Samuel: English actor, wit, and playwright whose gift for mimicry, often directed at his peers, made him a figure of both fear and delight on the London stage.
Foote, Shelby: American historian, novelist, and short-story writer known for his works treating the United States Civil War and the American South.
footman moth: any of the insects belonging to the subfamily Lithosiinae of the tiger moth family Arctiidae (order Lepidoptera). The common name footman is probably derived from the stiff, elongate appearance of ...
Foppa, Vincenzo: Italian painter, leading figure in 15th-century Lombard art, and an artist of exceptional integrity and power.
forage: vegetable food of wild or domestic animals. In agriculture, harvested, processed, and stored forage is called silage (q.v.).
foraminiferan: any unicellular organism of the rhizopodan order Foraminiferida (formerly Foraminifera), characterized by long, fine pseudopodia that extend from a uninucleated or multinucleated cytoplasmic body encased within a test, or shell. ...
Forbach: town, Moselle departement, Lorraine region, northeastern France, just southwest of Saarbrucken, Ger. The town, which has an important cokery and manufactures mining equipment, is at the edge of the Saar ...
Forberg, Friedrich Karl: German philosopher and educator.
Forbes: town, south central New South Wales, Australia, on the Lachlan River. Named after former New South Wales chief justice Sir Francis Forbes, it was proclaimed a town in 1861 during ...
Forbes' disease: rare hereditary disease in which the the metabolic breakdown of glycogen to the simple sugar glucose is incomplete, allowing intermediate compounds to accumulate in the cells of the liver. Affected ...
Forbes, Duncan: Scottish statesman whose loyalty to the Hanoverian king George II of Great Britain contributed markedly to the defeat of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46.
Forbes, Edward: British naturalist, pioneer in the field of biogeography, who analyzed the distribution of plant and animal life of the British Isles as related to certain geological changes.
Forbes, George William: farmer and politician who served as prime minister of New Zealand during the depression years (1930-35).
Forbes, James David: Scottish physicist noted for his research on heat conduction and glaciers.
Forbes, Malcolm S.: American business leader, owner-publisher of Forbes magazine, and promoter of capitalism known for his opulent lifestyle and lively self-promotion.
Forbes, Steve: American publishing executive who was twice a candidate for the nomination of the Republican Party for president.
Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnston: English actor who was considered the finest Hamlet of his time, noted for his elocution and ascetic features. (See .)
Forbidden City: imperial palace complex at the heart of Beijing (Peking), China. Commissioned in 1406 by the Yongle emperor of the Ming dynasty, it was first officially occupied by the court in ...
forbidden lines: in astronomical spectroscopy, bright emission lines in the spectra of certain nebulae (H II regions), not observed in the laboratory spectra of the same gases, because on Earth the gases ...
Forbin, Claude de: French naval officer notable for his daring exploits in Louis XIV's wars. These he recorded in his lively but not always objective Memoires, first published in 1730.
Forbush effect: in astronomy, an occasional decrease in the intensity of cosmic rays as observed on Earth, attributed to magnetic effects produced by solar flares, which are disturbances on the Sun. The ...
Forcados River: river, a major navigable channel of the Niger Delta, southern Nigeria. It leaves the main course of the Niger River about 20 miles (32 km) downstream from Aboh and flows ...
force: in mechanics, any action that tends to maintain or alter the motion of a body or to distort it. The concept of force is commonly explained in terms of Newton's ...
Force Acts: in U.S. history, series of four acts passed by Republican Reconstruction supporters in the Congress between May 31, 1870, and March 1, 1875, to protect the constitutional rights guaranteed to ...
Force, Juliana Rieser: American art administrator, the first director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, whose natural aesthetic sensitivity guided her strong influence on that institution's development.
force, line of: in physics, path followed by an electric charge free to move in an electric field or a mass free to move in a gravitational field, or generally any appropriate test ...
forced labour: labour performed involuntarily and under duress, usually by relatively large groups of people. Forced labour differs from slavery in that it involves not the ownership of one person by another ...
Forche, Carolyn: American poet whose concern for human rights is reflected in her writing, especially in the collection The Country Between Us (1981), which examines events she witnessed in El Salvador.
Forchheimer, Philipp: Austrian hydraulic engineer, one of the most significant contributors to the study of groundwater hydrology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He showed that many of the standard ...
Forckenbeck, Maximilian Franz August von: prominent leader of the 19th-century German National Liberal Party.
Ford Foundation: American philanthropic foundation, established in 1936 with gifts and bequests from Henry Ford and his son, Edsel. At the beginning of the 21st century, its assets exceeded $9 billion. Its ...
Ford Motor Company: American automotive corporation founded in 1903 by Henry Ford and 11 associate investors. In 1919 the company was reincorporated, with Ford, his wife, Clara, and his son, Edsel, acquiring full ...
Ford, Betty: American first lady (1974-77), the wife of Gerald Ford, 38th president of the United States, and founder of the Betty Ford Center, a facility dedicated to helping people recover from ...
Ford, Edmund Brisco: British geneticist who made substantial contributions to the genetics of natural selection and defined and developed the science of ecological genetics.
Ford, Ford Madox: English novelist, editor, and critic, an international influence in early 20th-century literature.
Ford, Francis Xavier: martyred American Roman Catholic missionary and bishop of Meixian in Guangdong province, China.
Ford, Gerald R.: 38th president of the United States (1974-77), who, as 40th vice president, succeeded to the presidency on the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon under the process decreed by the ...
Ford, Henry: American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods.
Ford, Henry, II: American industrialist and head of Ford Motor Company for 34 years (1945-79). He is generally credited with reviving the firm.
Ford, John: major English dramatist of the Caroline period, whose revenge tragedies are characterized by certain scenes of austere beauty, insight into human passions, and poetic diction of a high order.
Ford, John: original name Sean Aloysius O'feeney, or O'fearna American motion-picture director who was Hollywood's best-known director of westerns. He developed a distinctive directorial style characterized by effective cutting, an emphasis on ...
Ford, Richard: Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer of novels and short stories.
Forde, Francis Michael: politician and, for a short time, prime minister of Australia (1945).
Fordham University: private, coeducational institution of higher learning in New York, New York, U.S. It is affiliated with the Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic church. The university consists of the original ...
fore-and-aft sail: one of the two basic types of sailing rig, the other being the square sail. The fore-and-aft sail, now usually triangular, is set completely aft of a mast or stay, ...
fore-edge painting: technique of painting the edges of the leaves, or folios, of a book, employed in the European Middle Ages. Manuscript books with gold-tooled bindings often had the edges of their ...
foreclosure: legal proceeding by which a mortgagor's rights to a mortgaged property may be extinguished if the mortgagor (borrower) fails to live up to the obligations agreed to in the mortgage. ...
Foreign Affairs: journal of international relations, published in New York City six times a year, one of the most prestigious periodicals of its kind in the world. The organ of the Council ...
foreign aid: an international transfer of capital, goods, or services for the benefit of other nations and their citizens. Official foreign aid is offered in two major forms: (1) capital transfers, in ...
Foreign Legion: a military corps consisting originally of foreign volunteers in the pay of France but now including large numbers of Frenchmen. Its officers are nearly all from the French army, and ...