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leaf-rolling weevil ... lectisternium

leaf-rolling weevil: any of the beetles of the subfamily Attelabidae of the family Curculionidae (order Coleoptera), so named because of the way in which females protect their newly laid eggs by rolling ...
leafbird: (genus Chloropsis), any of about eight species of short-legged, grass-green birds (family Irenidae, order Passeriformes), from Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Some authorities place the leafbird in the bulbul family ...
leafcutter ant: any of 39 ant species abundant in the American tropics, easily recognized by their foraging columns composed of hundreds or thousands of ants carrying small pieces of leaves. These moving ...
leafhopper: any of the small, slender, often beautifully coloured and marked sap-sucking insects of the large family Cicadellidae (Jassidae) of the order Homoptera. They are found on almost all types of ...
leafy liverwort: any of numerous species of liverworts (class Hepaticae), generally of the order Jungermanniales, in which the plant body is prostrate and extends horizontally in leaflike form with an upper and ...
league: any of several European units of measurement ranging from 2.4 to 4.6 statute miles (3.9 to 7.4 km). In English-speaking countries the land league is generally accepted as 3 statute ...
League of Women Voters: nonpartisan American political organization that has pursued its mission of promoting active and unhampered participation in government since its establishment in 1920.
Leah: in the Old Testament (primarily in Genesis), first wife of Jacob (later Israel) and the traditional ancestor of five of the 12 tribes of Israel. Leah was the mother of ...
Leahy, Frank: American college gridiron football coach whose teams at the University of Notre Dame won 87 games, lost 11, and tied 9. His career winning percentage of .864 (107-13-9) ranks second ...
Leahy, William Daniel: American naval officer who served as personal chief of staff to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.
Leakey, Louis S.B.: Kenyan archaeologist and anthropologist whose fossil discoveries in East Africa proved that human beings were far older than had previously been believed and that human evolution was centred in Africa, ...
Leakey, Mary Douglas: English-born archaeologist and paleoanthropologist who made several fossil finds of great importance in the understanding of human evolution. Her early finds were interpreted and publicized by her husband, the noted ...
Leakey, Richard: Kenyan anthropologist, conservationist, and political figure who was responsible for extensive fossil finds related to human evolution and who campaigned publicly for responsible management of the environment in East Africa.
Lean, Sir David: British film director whose literate, epic productions featured spectacular cinematography and stunning locales.
Leaning Tower of Pisa: medieval structure in Pisa, Italy, that is famous for the settling of its foundations, which caused it to lean 5.5 degrees (about 15 feet [4.5 metres]) from the perpendicular by ...
leap of faith: metaphor used by the 19th-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in his Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift (1846; Concluding Unscientific Postscript) to describe commitment to an objective uncertainty, specifically to the Christian God. ...
leap year: year containing some intercalary period, especially a Gregorian year having a 29th day of February instead of the standard 28 days. The astronomical year, the time taken for the Earth ...
Lear: legendary British king and central character of William Shakespeare's King Lear. One of the most moving of Shakespeare's tragic figures, Lear grows in self-awareness as he diminishes in authority and ...
Lear, Edward: English landscape painter who is more widely known as the writer of an original kind of nonsense verse and as the popularizer of the limerick. His true genius is apparent ...
Lear, William P: self-taught American electrical engineer and industrialist whose Lear Jet Corporation was the first mass-manufacturer of business jet aircraft in the world. Lear also developed the automobile radio, the eight-track stereo ...
learning: the alteration of behaviour as a result of individual experience. When an organism can perceive and change its behaviour, it is said to learn.
learning theory: any of the proposals put forth to explain changes in behaviour produced by practice, as opposed to other factors, e.g., physiological development.
Leary, Timothy: American psychologist and author who was a leading advocate for the use of LSD and other psychoactive drugs.
lease: a contract for the exclusive possession of property (usually but not necessarily land or buildings) for a determinate period or at will. The person making the grant is called the ...
least squares approximation: in statistics, a method for estimating the true value of some quantity based on a consideration of errors in observations or measurements. In particular, the line (function) that minimizes the ...
leather: animal skins and hides that have been treated to preserve them and make them suitable for use.
leatherleaf: (Chamaedaphne calyculata), evergreen shrub of the heath family (Ericaceae). The name is also sometimes applied to a stiff-leaved fern.
Leaud, Jean-Pierre: French screen actor who played leading roles in some of the most important French New Wave films of the 1960s and '70s, particularly ones by Francois Truffaut.
leavening agent: substance causing expansion of doughs and batters by the release of gases within such mixtures, producing baked products with porous structure. Such agents include air, steam, yeast, baking powder, and ...
Leavenworth: city, seat (1855) of Leavenworth county, northeastern Kansas, U.S. It lies on the Missouri River. First settled as Fort Leavenworth in 1827 by Colonel Henry H. Leavenworth to protect travelers ...
Leavis, F.R.: English literary critic who introduced a new seriousness into a field still influenced by the informal narrative approach taken by George Saintsbury and other English critics.
Leavitt, Henrietta Swan: American astronomer known for her discovery of the relationship between period and luminosity in Cepheid variables, pulsating stars that vary regularly in brightness in periods ranging from a few days ...
Lebachia: a genus of extinct cone-bearing plants known from fossils of the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian epochs (from about 320 to 258 million years ago). Lebachia and related genera in ...
Lebanon: city, seat (1813) of Lebanon county, southeastern Pennsylvania, U.S., in the Lebanon Valley, 23 miles (37 km) east of Harrisburg. Settled by immigrant Germans in the 1720s, it was laid ...
Lebanon: city, Grafton county, western New Hampshire, U.S., on the Mascoma River near its junction with the Connecticut River, just south of Hanover. Founded in 1761 by settlers from Connecticut, the ...
Lebanon: country located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Consisting of a narrow strip of territory approximately 135 miles (215 kilometres) long from north to south and 20 to ...
Lebanon: county, southeastern Pennsylvania, U.S., located midway between the cities of Harrisburg and Reading. It consists of a central plain that rises to low hills in the south and to Blue ...
Lebanon: city, seat (1849) of Laclede county, south-central Missouri, U.S., in the Ozark Mountains about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Springfield. Founded about 1849, it was originally called Wyota for ...
Lebanon: city, seat of Wilson county, north-central Tennessee, U.S., about 30 miles (50 km) east of Nashville and about 5 miles (10 km) south of the Cumberland River. Established in 1802 ...
Lebanon: town (township), New London county, east-central Connecticut, U.S. Settled in 1695 and incorporated in 1700, its name was inspired by a nearby cedar forest that suggested the biblical cedars of ...
Lebanon Mountains: mountain range, extending almost the entire length of Lebanon, paralleling the Mediterranean coast for about 150 mi (240 km), with northern outliers extending into Syria.
Lebedev, Pyotr Nikolayevich: Russian physicist who demonstrated experimentally the minute pressure that light exerts on bodies (1910).
Lebedev, Sergey Vasilyevich: Russian chemist who developed a method for industrial production of synthetic rubber.
Lebesgue integral: way of extending the concept of area inside a curve to include functions that do not have graphs representable pictorially. The graph of a function is defined as the set ...
Lebesgue, Henri-Leon: French mathematician whose generalization of the Riemann integral revolutionized the field of integration.
Leblanc, Maurice: French author and journalist, known as the creator of Arsene Lupin, French gentleman-thief turned detective, who is featured in more than 60 of Leblanc's crime novels and short stories.
Leblanc, Nicolas: French surgeon and chemist who in 1790 developed the process for making soda ash (sodium carbonate) from common salt (sodium chloride). This process, which bears his name, became one of ...
Leboeuf, Edmond: French general who was marshal of the Second Empire and minister of war in the crucial period at the opening of the Franco-German War.
Lebombo Mountains: long, narrow mountain range in South Africa, Swaziland, and Mozambique, southeastern Africa, about 500 miles (800 km) long and consisting of volcanic rocks. The mountains' name is derived from a ...
Lebon, Philippe: French engineer and chemist, inventor of illuminating gas.
Lebowa: former nonindependent black state that was in northern Transvaal, South Africa. The state was made up of two major and several minor exclaves (detached portions). It was designated by the ...
Lebowakgomo: new town, Northern province, South Africa. It was the capital of the former nonindependent black state of Lebowa. Lebowakgomo lies southeast of Pietersburg. The town, established in 1974 with a ...
Lebrija: city, Seville provincia, Andalusia comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community"), southwestern Spain. It is located south of the city of Seville in the lower basin of the Guadalquivir River. Founded as Nebritza ...
Lebrun, Albert: 14th and last president (1932-40) of France's Third Republic. During the first year of World War II, he sought to preserve French unity in the face of internal political dissension ...
Lebrun, Charles-Francois, Duke De Plaisance, Prince De L'empire: French politician who served as third consul from 1799 to 1804, as treasurer of Napoleon's empire from 1804 to 1814, and as governor-general of Holland from 1811 to 1813.
Lebu: capital of Arauco provincia, Bio-Bio region, south-central Chile. It lies on the Pacific coast at the mouth of the Lebu River. Founded in 1739 but destroyed several times by Araucanian ...
Lecce: city, capital of Lecce provincia, Puglia (Apulia) regione, southeastern Italy. It lies on the Salentina peninsula, or "heel" of Italy, east of Taranto. Possibly built on the site of the ...
Lecco: town, capital of Lecco provincia, Lombardia (Lombardy) regione, northern Italy. It lies at the southern end of the eastern arm of Lake Como, at the outflow of the Adda River. ...
lechatelierite: a natural silica glass (silicon dioxide, SiO₂) that has the same chemical composition as coesite, cristobalite, keatite, quartz, and tridymite but has a different crystal structure. Two varieties are included: ...
Lechon, Jan: poet, editor, diplomat, and political propagandist, considered one of the foremost Polish poets of his generation.
lechwe: antelope species of the genus Kobus (q.v.).
lecithin: any of a group of phospholipids (phosphoglycerides) that are important in cell structure and metabolism. Lecithins are composed of phosphoric acid, cholines, esters of glycerol, and two fatty acids; the ...
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole: Irish historian of rationalism and European morals whose study of Georgian England became a classic.
Leclair, Jean-Marie, The Elder: French violinist and composer who established the classical French violin school that supplanted the earlier Italian school.
Leclanche, Georges: French engineer who in about 1866 invented the battery that bears his name. In slightly modified form, the Leclanche battery, now called a dry cell, is produced in great quantities ...
Leclerc, Charles: French general, brother-in-law of Napoleon, who attempted to suppress the Haitian revolt led by the former slave Toussaint-Louverture.
Leclerc, Jacques-Philippe: French general and war hero who achieved fame as the liberator of Paris.
Leclerc, Jean: encyclopaedist and biblical scholar who espoused advanced principles of exegesis (interpretation) and theological method.
LeClercq, Tanaquil: versatile American ballet dancer, remembered largely for her work in association with George Balanchine, to whom she was married from 1952 to 1969.
Lecocq, Charles: one of the principal French composers of operettas after Offenbach, especially known for his La Fille de Madame Angot.
Lecompton Constitution: (1857), instrument framed in Lecompton, Kan., by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood. It contained clauses protecting slaveholding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to ...
Leconte de Lisle, Charles-Marie-Rene: poet, leader of the Parnassians, who from 1865 to 1895 was acknowledged as the foremost French poet apart from the aging Victor Hugo.
Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Paul-Emile: French chemist who developed improved spectroscopic techniques for chemical analysis and discovered the elements gallium (1875), samarium (1880), and dysprosium (1886).
Lecouvreur, Adrienne: leading French actress whose life inspired a tragic drama a century after her death.
lectionary: in Christianity, a book containing portions of the Bible appointed to be read on particular days of the year. The word is also used for the list of such Scripture ...
lectisternium: (from Latin lectum sternere, "to spread a couch"), ancient Greek and Roman rite in which a meal was offered to gods and goddesses whose representations were laid upon a couch ...