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Penna, Sandro ... Peoria

Penna, Sandro: Italian poet who celebrated homosexual love, particularly pederasty, with lyrical elegance. Usually written in the form of epigrams, his moody poems often feature the tranquil, homoerotic imagery of young boys ...
Pennacook: Algonquian-speaking American Indians whose villages were located in what are now southern and central New Hampshire, northeastern Massachusetts, and southern Maine. Like other New England Algonquian-speaking tribes, they depended on ...
Pennant, Thomas: Welsh naturalist and traveler, one of the foremost zoologists of his time.
Pennel, John: American pole-vaulter who was the first to jump more than 5.18 m (17 feet) and was a world-record holder (1963, 1966, 1969).
Pennell, Joseph: American etcher, lithographer, and writer who was one of the major book illustrators of his time.
Penneru River: river rising on the Deccan Plateau 7 miles (11 km) west-southwest of Chik Ballapur, Karnataka state, southern India. It flows north into Andhra Pradesh state and turns east-southeast toward the ...
Penney Company: ., American retail company founded in 1902 by James Cash Penney and today engaged in marketing apparel, home and automotive products, drugstore merchandise, and insurance. The firm serves consumers principally ...
Penney, J.C.: merchant who established one of the largest chains of department stores in the United States.
Penney, William Penney, Baron: British nuclear physicist who led Britain's development of the atomic bomb.
Pennine Alps: segment of the central Alps along the Italian-Swiss border, bounded by the Great St. Bernard Pass and the Mont Blanc group (southwest), by the Upper Rhone Valley (north), by Simplon ...
Pennines: major upland mass forming a relief "backbone," or "spine," in the north of England, extending southward from Northumberland into Derbyshire. The uplands have a short, steep western slope and dip ...
Pennisetum: genus of the grass family (Poaceae), containing about 80 species of annual and perennial plants, native to tropical and subtropical areas. Kikuyu grass (P. clandestinum), a perennial sod-forming species, is ...
Pennsylvania: constituent state of the United States of America, one of the original 13 American colonies. The 45,308 square miles (117,348 square km) of the state are bounded on the north ...
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the oldest art academy and museum in the United States, founded 1805. Specializing in American painting and sculpture of the 18th to the 20th century, ...
Pennsylvania Avenue: major thoroughfare of Washington, D.C. It runs for 7 miles (11 km) in a northwesterly direction from the District of Columbia-Maryland line over the Anacostia River (John Philip Sousa Bridge) ...
Pennsylvania German: 17th- and 18th-century German-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania and their descendants. Emigrating from southern Germany (Palatinate, Bavaria, Saxony, etc.) and Switzerland, they settled primarily in the southeastern section of Pennsylvania, where ...
Pennsylvania Railroad Company: largest of the trunkline railroads that connected the East Coast of the United States with the interior. It was chartered in 1846 by the Pennsylvania legislature to build a line ...
Pennsylvania State University: coeducational state-supported system of higher education in Pennsylvania, U.S. The main campus, at University Park, is the system's largest branch and is the focus of its graduate and four-year undergraduate ...
Pennsylvania system: penal method based on the principle that solitary confinement fosters penitence and encourages reformation. The idea was advocated by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, whose ...
Pennsylvania, University of: private university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., one of the Ivy League schools and the oldest university in the country.
Pennsylvanian period: in North America, interval of geologic time roughly equivalent to what is internationally designated the Late Carboniferous Epoch (320 to 286 million years ago). Because the rocks that originated during ...
penny dreadful: an inexpensive novel of violent adventure or crime that was especially popular in mid-to-late Victorian England. Penny dreadfuls were often issued in eight-page installments. The appellation, like dime novel and ...
Penny Post: private postal service created by the London merchant William Dockwra in 1680. All letters and packets up to one pound in weight were delivered for one penny (1 d). The ...
pennycress: (genus Thlaspi), plant of the mustard family (Brassicaceae), named and sometimes grown for its round seedpods. Most of the 60 species are Eurasian, but a few are native to North ...
Pennzoil Company: American petrochemical corporation that was founded in Pennsylvania in 1889 as a producing unit of the Standard Oil Trust and-after several structural changes, mergers, and acquisitions over the years-underwent reincorporation ...
Penobscot: Algonkian-speaking Indians who lived on both sides of the Penobscot Bay and throughout the Penobscot River basin in what is now Maine, U.S. They were members of the Abenaki confederacy. ...
Penobscot: county, east-central Maine, U.S. Located in a highland region, the county contains many lakes, rivers, and ponds, foremost among them being the Penobscot River, the longest in the state; nearly ...
Penobscot River: river in Maine, U.S., formed by several headstreams draining numerous lakes that were created by melting glaciers. It is the state's longest river, about 350 miles (560 km) in length. ...
penology: the division of criminology that concerns itself with the philosophy and practice of society in its efforts to repress criminal activities. As the term signifies (from Latin poena, "pain," or ...
Penrith: town, Eden district, administrative county of Cumbria, historic county of Cumberland, England. It is situated on a main route to Scotland, at the foot of the 937-foot (286-metre) Penrith Beacon ...
Penrith: city, east-central New South Wales, Australia, on the Nepean River, a section of the Hawkesbury River. Founded in 1815, it was known as Evan and Castlereagh before being renamed after ...
Penrose, Boies: American legislator and longtime party boss of Pennsylvania. He served as U.S. senator from Pennsylvania from 1897 to 1921.
Penrose, Sir Roger: British mathematician and relativist who in the 1960s calculated many of the basic features of black holes.
Penryn: English Channel port, Carrick district, administrative and historic county of Cornwall, England. It lies at the head of the River Penryn's estuary. The town owes its development to the bishops ...
Pensacola: city, seat (1822) of Escambia county, extreme northwestern Florida, U.S. It lies on Pensacola Bay (an arm of the Gulf of Mexico), about 35 miles (55 km) west of Fort ...
pensee: a thought expressed in literary form. A pensee can be short and in a specific form, such as an aphorism or epigram, or it can be as long as a ...
pension: series of periodic money payments made to a person who retires from employment because of age, disability, or the completion of an agreed span of service. The payments generally continue ...
pensionary: powerful political office in the Dutch Republic (United Provinces; 1579-1795). Pensionaries, originally the secretaries and legal advisers of the town corporations, were first appointed in the 15th century. They were ...
Penstemon: the beard-tongue genus of the figwort order (Scrophulariales), containing about 250 species of plants native to North America, particularly the western United States. The flowers are usually large and showy, ...
Pentaceratops: five-horned herbivorous dinosaur found as fossils in North America and possibly eastern Asia dating from the Late Cretaceous Period (99 million to 65 million years ago). Pentaceratops was about 6 ...
Pentagon: large five-sided building in Arlington county, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., that serves as the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, including all three military services-Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Pentagon Papers: papers that contain a history of the U.S. role in Indochina from World War II until May 1968 and that were commissioned in 1967 by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert ...
pentameter: in poetry, a line of verse containing five metrical feet. In English verse, in which pentameter has been the predominant metre since the 16th century, the preferred foot is the ...
pentarchy: in early Byzantine Christianity, the proposed government of universal Christendom by five patriarchal sees under the auspices of a single universal empire. Formulated in the legislation of the emperor Justinian ...
pentastomid: any of about 70 species of tiny parasites belonging to the Pentastomida, usually considered a class. Pentastomids are considered to lie between annelids and arthropods in evolutionary development. They range ...
Pentateuch: the first five books of the Old Testament. See Torah.
pentathlon: athletic contest entailing five distinct types of competition. In the ancient Greek Olympics, the pentathlon included a race the length of the stadium (about 183 m [200 yd]), the long ...
pentatonic scale: musical scale containing five different tones. It is thought that the pentatonic scale represents an early stage of musical development, because it is found, in different forms, in most of ...
Pentecost: major festival in the Christian church, celebrated on the Sunday that falls on the 50th day after Easter. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, which ...
Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc.: Protestant denomination organized in the United States in 1916 after many members withdrew from the Assemblies of God during the Jesus Only controversy, a movement that denied the standard Pentecostal ...
Pentecostal Church of God of America, Inc.: Protestant denomination organized in Chicago in 1919 as the Pentecostal Assemblies of the U.S.A. by a group of ministers who had earlier refused affiliation in the General Council of the ...
Pentecostal Fellowship of North America: cooperative organization established in Chicago in 1948 by eight Pentecostal denominations for the purpose of "interdenominational Pentecostal cooperation and fellowship." Several Canadian and U.S. Pentecostal bodies are members of the ...
Pentecostal Holiness Church, Inc.: Protestant denomination organized in Falcon, N.C., in 1911 by the merger of the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church (organized in 1898 by several Pentecostal associations) and the Pentecostal Holiness Church (organized in ...
Pentecostalism: charismatic religious movement that gave rise to a number of Protestant churches in the United States in the 20th century and that is unique in its belief that all Christians ...
Pentecote: island of Vanuatu, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, 60 miles (100 km) southeast of Espiritu Santo island. Volcanic in origin, it occupies 169 square miles (438 square km) and has ...
Pentelicus, Mount: mountain range enclosing the Attic plain on its northeast but within the nomos (department) of Attiki, in Greece. The chief summit, about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Athens, is ...
Penthorum: genus of perennial herbs native to East Asia and eastern North America. All three species in the genus have underground stems, toothed leaves, and one-sided flower clusters borne at the ...
penthouse: enclosed area on top of a building. Such a structure may house the top of an elevator shaft, air-conditioning equipment, or the stairs leading to the roof; it can also ...
Penticton: city, southern British Columbia, Canada. It lies between Skaha and Okanagan lakes, 245 miles (394 km) east of Vancouver. The site was first settled in 1865, its name being derived ...
pentimento: (from Italian pentirsi: "to repent"), in art, the reappearance in an oil painting of original elements of drawing or painting that the artist tried to obliterate by overpainting. If the ...
pentlandite: a nickel and iron sulfide mineral, the chief source of nickel. It is nearly always found with pyrrhotite and similar minerals in silica-poor rocks such as those at Bushveld, S.Af.; ...
pentode: vacuum-type electron tube with five electrodes. Besides the cathode filament, anode plate, and control grid of the triode and the added screen grid of the tetrode, there is still another ...
pentosuria: inborn error of carbohydrate metabolism, characterized by the excessive urinary excretion of the sugar xylitol. It is caused by a defect in the enzyme xylitol dehydrogenase, by which xylitol is ...
Pentremites: extinct genus of stemmed, immobile echinoderms (forms related to the starfish) abundant as marine fossils in rocks of the Carboniferous Period (from 360 to 286 million years ago), especially those ...
penumbra: (from Latin paene, "almost"; umbra, "shadow"), in astronomy, the outer part of a conical shadow, cast by a celestial body, where the light from the Sun is partially blocked-as compared ...
Penutian languages: major grouping (phylum or superstock) of American Indian languages, spoken along the west coast of North America from British Columbia to central California and central New Mexico. The phylum consists ...
Penwith: district, administrative and historic county of Cornwall, extreme southwestern England. It is a promontory, including the Land's End peninsula at the westernmost tip of the island of Great Britain, bordered ...
Penza: oblast (province), western Russia, occupying an area of 16,680 square miles (43,200 square km) across the western flank of the Volga Upland, which falls gently to the Oka-Don Plain in ...
Penza: city and administrative centre of Penza oblast (province), western Russia, at the confluence of the Penza and Sura rivers. The city was founded in 1666 as a major fortress; after ...
Penzance: town ("parish"), Penwith district, administrative and historic county of Cornwall, England. It overlooks Mounts Bay, where the English Channel meets the Atlantic Ocean. The remarkably equable climate allows many subtropical ...
Penzias, Arno: German-American astrophysicist who shared one-half of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics with Robert Woodrow Wilson for their discovery of a faint electromagnetic radiation throughout the universe. Their detection of ...
peonage: form of involuntary servitude, the origins of which have been traced as far back as the Spanish conquest of Mexico, when the conquerors were able to force the poor, especially ...
peony: any of the flowering plants in the genus Paeonia (family Paeoniaceae) known for their large, showy blossoms. All but two species are native to Europe and Asia; P. browni and ...
People's Democratic Party: Nigerian political party.
Peoples Temple: religious community led by James Warren ("Jim") Jones (1931-78) that came to international attention after some 900 of its members died at their compound, Jonestown, in Guyana, in a massive ...
Peoria: city, seat (1825) of Peoria county, central Illinois, U.S. Peoria lies along the Illinois River where it widens to form Peoria Lake, about 160 miles (260 km) southwest of Chicago. ...