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Queen Elizabeth ... quinceanera

Queen Elizabeth: one of the largest passenger liners ever built. Launched in 1938 and used as a troopship during World War II, it entered the regular transatlantic service of the Cunard Line ...
Queen Elizabeth Islands: part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, comprising all the islands north of latitude 74°30' N, including the Parry and Sverdrup island groups. The islands, the largest of which are Ellesmere, ...
Queen Elizabeth National Park: national park, southwestern Uganda. It occupies an area of 764 square miles (1,978 square km) in a region of rolling plains east of Lake Edward and foothills south of the ...
Queen Maud Land: region of Antarctica south of Africa, extending from Coats Land (west) to Enderby Land (east) and including the Princess Martha, Princess Astrid, Princess Ragnhild, Prince Harold, and Prince Olav coasts. ...
Queen Maud Mountains: subdivision of the Transantarctic Mountains of central Antarctica, extending southeastward for 500 miles (800 km) from the head of Ross Ice Shelf. Discovered in 1911 by the Norwegian explorer Roald ...
Queen's Bench, Court of: formerly one of the superior courts of common law in England. Queen's, or King's, Bench was so called because it descended from the English court held coram rege ("before the ...
Queen's Gallery: small public art gallery at the queen's official London residence, Buckingham Palace, in the borough of Westminster. Opened in 1962, the gallery is on the site of a private chapel ...
Queen's University at Kingston: nondenominational, coeducational university at Kingston, Ont., Can. Originally called Queen's College, it was founded in 1841 as a Presbyterian denominational school to train young men for the ministry. The Presbyterian ...
Queen, Ellery: American cousins who were coauthors of a series of more than 35 detective novels featuring a character named Ellery Queen.
Queens: largest of the five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens county, southeastern New York, U.S. The borough lies on western Long Island and extends across the width of ...
Queens, Valley of the: gorge in the hills along the western bank of the Nile River in Upper Egypt. It was part of ancient Thebes and served as the burial site of the queens ...
Queensland: state of northeastern Australia, occupying the wettest and most tropical part of the continent. It is bounded on the north and east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by ...
Queenston Delta: Late Ordovician wedge of sediments that spread across an extensive area of northeastern North America and was thickest in New York and Quebec (the Late Ordovician Period occurred from 458 ...
Queenston Heights, Battle of: (Oct. 13, 1812), serious U.S. reverse in the War of 1812, sustained during an abortive attempt to invade Canada. On Oct. 13, 1812, Major General Stephen Van Rensselaer, commanding a ...
Queenstown: town, Eastern province, South Africa. The town lies in an upper valley of the Great Kei River. It has a distinctive hexagonal shape, designed by its founder, Sir George Cathcart ...
Queenstown: town, western Tasmania, Australia. It lies in the west-coast ranges, in the Queen River valley. Founded in 1897 after gold, silver, and copper were discovered at nearby Mount Lyell, the ...
Queiroz Law: (1850), measure enacted by the Brazilian parliament to make the slave trade illegal. In the mid-19th century the British government put pressure on Brazil to put an end to traffic ...
Queiroz, Rachel de: Brazilian novelist and member of a group of Northeastern writers known for their modernist novels of social criticism, written in a colloquial style (see also Northeastern school).
quelea: (species Quelea quelea), small brownish bird of Africa, belonging to the songbird family Ploceidae (order Passeriformes). It occurs in such enormous numbers that it often destroys grain crops and, by ...
Queler, Eve: American conductor, one of the first women to establish herself in the traditionally male-dominated field of orchestral conducting.
Quelimane: town and seaport, east-central Mozambique. It is situated near the mouth of the Bons Sinais River, on the Indian Ocean. One of the oldest settlements in the area, it was ...
Queluz: town and palace, Lisboa distrito ("district"), Portugal, just northwest of Lisbon. During the 17th century the site was occupied by estates owned by Lisbon nobility. Queluz is known for the ...
Quemoy Island: island under the jurisdiction of Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait at the mouth of mainland China's Xiamen (Amoy) Bay and about 170 miles (275 km) northwest of Kao-hsiung, Taiwan. Quemoy ...
quenching: rapid cooling, as by immersion in oil or water, of a metal object from the high temperature at which it has been shaped. This usually is undertaken to maintain mechanical ...
Queneau, Raymond: French author who produced some of the most important prose and poetry of the mid-20th century.
Quennell, Sir Peter: English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, and critic, a wide-ranging man of letters who was an authority on Lord Byron.
Quental, Antero Tarquinio de: Portuguese poet who was a leader of the Generation of Coimbra, a group of young poets associated with the University of Coimbra in the 1860s who revolted against Romanticism and ...
Querandi: South American Indians who inhabited the Argentine Pampas between Cabo Blanco on the Atlantic coast and the Cordoba Mountains on the western shores of the Rio de la Plata. Their ...
quercitron bark: inner bark of the black oak, Quercus velutina, which contains a colouring matter used to dye wool bright yellow or orange. At one time this colorant was used with cochineal ...
Quercy: historic and cultural region encompassing most of the southwestern French departements of Lot and Tarn-et-Garonne and coextensive with the former district of Quercy. The district was organized in Gallo-Roman times ...
Queretaro: estado ("state"), central Mexico. It is bounded north and northeast by San Luis Potosi, southeast by Hidalgo and Mexico, southwest by a corner of Michoacan, and west by Guanajuato. Situated ...
Queretaro: city, capital of Queretaro estado (state), central Mexico. Situated on the Mexican Plateau at an elevation of about 6,100 feet (1,860 metres) above sea level, it is ...
Querido, Israel: Dutch novelist of the naturalist movement.
quern: ancient device for grinding grain. The saddle quern, consisting simply of a flat stone bed and a rounded stone to be operated manually against it, dates from Neolithic times (before ...
Quervain, Marcel Roland de: Swiss glaciologist known for his fundamental work on the metamorphism and physical properties of snow.
Quesnay, Francois: French economist and intellectual leader of the physiocrats, the first systematic school of political economy.
Quesnel: town, south-central British Columbia, Canada. It lies at the confluence of the Quesnel and Fraser rivers, 411 miles (661 km) north of Vancouver. The river and townsite (Quesnellemouth until 1864) ...
Quesnel, Pasquier: controversial French theologian who led the Jansenists (followers of Bishop Cornelius Jansen's heretical doctrines on predestination, free will, and grace) through the persecution by King Louis XIV of France until ...
Quetelet, Adolphe: Belgian mathematician, astronomer, statistician, and sociologist known for his application of statistics and probability theory to social phenomena.
Quetico Provincial Park: wilderness park, southwestern Ontario, Canada, west of Lake Superior and adjoining the U.S. border. Established in 1913, the park has an area of 1,832 sq mi (4,744 sq km). The ...
Quetta: city, district, and division of Baluchistan Province, Pakistan. The name is a variation of kwatkot, a Pashto word meaning "fort," and the city is still locally known by its ancient ...
quetzal: any of several birds belonging to the genus Pharomachrus of the trogon family. See trogon.
Quetzalcoatl: (from Nahuatl quetzalli, "tail feather of the quetzal bird [Pharomachrus mocinno]," and coatl, "snake"), the Feathered Serpent, one of the major ...
Quetzaltenango: capital, Quetzaltenango department, southwestern Guatemala, 7,656 feet (2,334 m) above sea level near the foot of the Santa Maria Volcano. The city's high elevation causes the temperature to drop below ...
queuing theory: subject in operations research that deals with the problem of providing adequate but economical service facilities involving unpredictable numbers and times or similar sequences. In queuing theory the term customers ...
Quevedo y Villegas, Francisco Gomez de: poet and master satirist of Spain's Golden Age, who, as a virtuoso of language, is unequaled in Spanish literature.
Queyras: high Alpine valley of the Guil River in Hautes-Alpes departement, in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region of southwestern France. The Queyras extends from the confluence of the Guil and Durance rivers ...
Quezon City: chartered city and capital of the Philippines from 1948 to 1976. The city is located immediately northeast of Manila, in central Luzon. Named for President Manuel Luis Quezon, who selected ...
Quezon, Manuel: Filipino statesman, leader of the independence movement, and first president of the Philippine Commonwealth established under U.S. tutelage in 1935.
Qui Nhon: city, central Vietnam. It is on the coast of the South China Sea at the entrance to the shallow 17-mile- (27-km-) long Qui Nhon Bay, which trends north-south. The port ...
Quibd: city, western Colombia, on the Atrato River, in the Pacific coastal plain. It receives more than 420 inches (10,700 mm) of rain per year, which probably exceeds that of any ...
Quiche: department, northwestern Guatemala, bounded on the north by Mexico. The 3,235 sq mi (8,378 sq km) of the department extend from the valley of the upper Rio Motagua across the ...
Quiche: Mayan Indians living in the midwestern highlands of Guatemala. The Quiche Maya had an advanced civilization in pre-Columbian times, with a high level of political and social organization. Archaeological remains ...
Quiche language: an American Indian language of the Mayan family, spoken in the western highlands of Guatemala. It is most closely related to the Cakchiquel, Tzutujil, Sacapultee, and Sipacapa languages of central ...
Quicherat, Jules: French historian and pioneering archaeologist who was a major force in French scholarship during the 19th century.
quicklime: calcium oxide, an alkaline inorganic compound of calcium (q.v.).
quicksand: state in which saturated sand loses its supporting capacity and acquires the character of a liquid. Quicksand is usually found in hollows at the mouths of large rivers or along ...
Quidde, Ludwig: historian, politician, and one of the most prominent German pacifists of the early 20th century. He was the cowinner (with Ferdinand-Edouard Buisson) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1927.
Quidor, John: American genre painter and artisan. In 17 of his approximately 35 paintings he depicted subjects from Washington Irving's stories: e.g., the paintings Ichabod Crane at the Van ...
Quietism: a doctrine of Christian spirituality that, in general, holds that perfection consists in passivity (quiet) of the soul, in the suppression of human effort so that divine action may have ...
quill: hollow, horny barrel of a bird's feather, used as the principal writing instrument from the 6th century until the mid-19th century, when steel pen points were introduced. The strongest quills ...
Quillen, Daniel Gray: American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1978 for contributions to algebraic K-theory.
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas: English poet, novelist, and anthologist noted for his compilation of The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 (1900; revised 1939) and The Oxford Book of Ballads (1910).
quillwork: type of embroidery done with the quills of a porcupine, or sometimes with bird feathers. This type of decoration was used by American Indians from Maine to Virginia and westward ...
quillwort: (Isoetes species), any of more than 60 species of small plants that constitute the genus Isoetes, of the order Isoetales (class Lycopsida). They are spore-bearing plants with grassy, spikelike leaves, ...
Quilmes: cabecera (principal built-up area) and partido (political subdivision), of Gran (Greater) Buenos Aires, southeast of the city of Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires province, Argentina, near the Rio de la ...
Quilon: town, administrative headquarters of Quilon district, southern Kerala state, southwestern India. Quilon has existed for many centuries and was called Elancon by early travellers, Kaulam Mall by the Arabs, and ...
quilting: sewing technique in which two layers of fabric, usually with an insulating interior layer, are sewn together with multiple rows of stitching. It has long been used for clothing in ...
Quimby, Harriet: American aviator, the first female pilot to fly across the English Channel.
Quimby, Phineas Parkhurst: U.S. exponent of mental healing who is generally regarded as the founder of the New Thought movement, a religio-metaphysical healing cult.
Quimper: town, capital of Finistere departement, Bretagne region, France, and a port at the estuarine confluence of the Odet and Steir rivers. Once the ancient capital of the countship Cornouaille, it ...
Quimper faience: tin-enamelled earthenware produced by a factory at Loc Maria, a suburb of Quimper in Brittany, Fr. The factory was founded in 1690 by Jean-Baptiste Bosquet, a potter from Marseille who ...
Quin, James: English actor whose Falstaff was considered the finest of his time.
Quinara: region, southwestern Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, bordered by the regions of Tombali on the south and east, Bafata on the northeast, Oio on the north, and Biombo on the northwest. Quinara ...
quince: fruit tree of the genus Cydonia, of the rose family (Rosaceae). The much-branched shrubs or small trees have entire leaves with small stipules and bear large, solitary, white or pink ...
quinceanera: Mexican celebration of a girl's 15th birthday, marking her passage from childhood to adulthood. The traditional quinceanera is both a religious and a social event that emphasizes ...