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Vega ... Venette, Jean de

Vega: brightest star in the northern constellation Lyra and fourth brightest in the night sky, with a visual magnitude of 0.04. It is also one of the Sun's closer neighbours, at ...
Vega, Lope de: in full Lope Felix De Vega Carpio, byname The Phoenix Of Spain, Spanish El Fenix De Espana outstanding dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age, author of as many as 1,800 ...
vegetable: in the broadest sense, any kind of plant life or plant product, namely "vegetable matter"; in common, narrow usage, the term vegetable usually refers to the fresh edible portion of ...
vegetable farming: growing of vegetable crops, primarily for use as human food.
vegetable processing: preparation of vegetables for use by humans as food.
vegetarianism: the theory or practice of living solely upon vegetables, fruits, grains, and nuts, generally for ethical, ascetic, or nutritional reasons. All forms of flesh (meat, fowl, and fish) are excluded ...
Vegetius: Roman military expert who wrote what was perhaps the single most influential military treatise in the Western world. His work exercised great influence on European tactics after the Middle Ages.
vehicular safety devices: seat belts, harnesses, inflatable cushions, and other devices designed to protect occupants of vehicles from injury in case of accident. A seat belt is a strap that fastens a rider ...
Veii: ancient Etruscan town, located about 10 miles northwest of Rome. Veii was the greatest centre for the fabrication of terra-cotta sculptures in Etruria in the 6th century BC. The town ...
vein: in geology, ore body that is disseminated within definite boundaries in unwanted rock or minerals (gangue). The term, as used by geologists, is nearly synonymous with the term lode, as ...
vein: in human physiology, any of the vessels that, with four exceptions, carry oxygen-depleted blood to the right upper chamber (atrium) of the heart. The four exceptions-the pulmonary veins-transport oxygenated blood ...
Vejle: city and port, seat of Vejle amtskommune (county), eastern Jutland, Denmark, located on Vejle Fjord, northwest of Fredericia. Chartered in 1327, it is now an agricultural distribution ...
Vejovis: in Roman religion, a god of uncertain attributes, worshiped at Rome between the two summits of the Capitoline Hill (the Arx and the Capitol) and on Tiber Island (both temples ...
Vela: any of a series of 12 unmanned U.S. reconnaissance satellites developed to detect radiation from nuclear explosions in the Earth's atmosphere. Launched from 1963 to 1970, the Vela satellites were ...
velarization: in phonetics, secondary articulation in the pronunciation of consonants, in which the tongue is drawn far up and back in the mouth (toward the velum, or soft palate), as if ...
Velasco Alvarado, Juan: president of Peru from 1968 until 1975.
Velasco Ibarra, Jose Maria: lawyer, major political figure in Ecuador from the 1930s to the '70s, and five times president of Ecuador.
Velazquez de Cuellar, Diego: conquistador and first Spanish governor of Cuba.
Velazquez, Diego: the most important Spanish painter of the 17th century, a giant of Western art.
veld: name given to various types of open country in southern Africa that is used for pasturage and farmland. To most South African farmers today the "veld" refers to the land ...
Velde, Adriaen van de: Dutch painter, draftsman, and etcher who specialized in landscapes and animals.
Velde, Esaias van de: painter, draftsman, and etcher who was one of the founders of the realist school of Dutch landscape painting in the early decades of the 17th century.
Velde, Henry van de: Belgian architect and teacher who ranks with his compatriot Victor Horta as an originator of the Art Nouveau style, characterized by long sinuous lines derived from naturalistic forms.
Velenje: town, northern Slovenia. It lies 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Celje on the Paka River. Velenje was built as a model mine-workers' town with distinct administrative, business, residential, and ...
Velez de Guevara, Luis: Spanish poet, playwright, and novelist who ranks high among the followers of Lope de Vega and displays a gift for creating character. His fantastic satirical novel, El diablo cojuelo (1641; ...
veliger: larva typical of certain mollusks such as marine snails and bivalves. The veliger develops from trochophore (q.v.) larva and has large, ciliated lobes (velum) that form from the ciliary ring ...
Veliki Preslav: town, eastern Bulgaria. It lies at the foot of the Preslav Mountains, 11 miles (18 km) southwest of Shumen. Founded by the Proto-Bulgarians in the 8th century and called Yeski ...
Velikiye Luki: city, Pskov oblast (province), western Russia, situated on the Lovat River. Founded by 1166, the city was sacked by Lithuanians in 1198, by King Stephen Bathory of Poland in 1581, ...
Veliko Turnovo: majestic old town in northern Bulgaria. Veliko Turnovo ("Great Turnovo") occupies near-vertical slopes above the 800-foot (240-metre) meandering gorge of the Yantra (Jantra) River. The houses, built in terraces, appear ...
Velikonda Range: range of hills in southeastern Andhra Pradesh state, southern India. They trend north to south and form the eastern flank of the Eastern Ghats, which at that point are strongly ...
Velikovsky, Immanuel: American writer, proponent of controversial theories of cosmogony and history.
Veliky Ustyug: city, Vologda oblast (province), northwestern Russia, a port on the Sukhona River. One of the oldest settlements of European Russia, mentioned in documents from 1218, it was an important trading ...
Velleius Paterculus: Roman soldier, political figure, and historian whose work on Rome is a valuable if amateurish source for the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius.
Vellore: city, northern Tamil Nadu state, southern India. Vellore lies along the Palar River, southwest of Chennai (Madras). A notable feature of the city is its fort, the site of the ...
Vellore Mutiny: (May 10, 1806), outbreak against the British by South Indian troops, who broke into the fort at Vellore, where the sons of Tippu Sultan of Mysore had been lodged since ...
velocipede: version of the bicycle reinvented in the 1860s by the Michaux family of Paris. Its iron and wood construction and lack of springs earned it the nickname boneshaker. It was ...
Velociraptor: sickle-clawed dinosaur that flourished in central and eastern Asia during the Late Cretaceous Period (99 million to 65 million years ago). It is closely related to the North American
velocity: quantity that designates how fast and in what direction a point is moving. A point always moves in a direction that is tangent to its path; for a circular path, ...
Velsen: gemeente (commune), Noord-Holland provincie, western Netherlands. Velsen lies along the North Sea Canal, which connects Amsterdam with the North Sea. The commune embraces IJmuiden ...
Veltman, Martinus J.G.: Dutch physicist, corecipient with Gerardus 't Hooft of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Physics for their development of a method of mathematically predicting the properties of both the subatomic particles ...
velvet: in textiles, fabric having a short, dense pile, used in clothing and upholstery. The term derives from the Middle French velu, "shaggy." Velvet is made in the pile weave, of ...
velvet ant: any species of solitary (nonsocial) wasp of the family Mutillidae, belonging to the order Hymenoptera. Velvet ants are so called because the females are covered with dense hairs and, like ...
velvet crab: any of certain species in the swimming crab (q.v.) group.
velvet grass: one of eight perennial grasses constituting the genus Holcus (family Poaceae), native to Europe and Africa. It has tufted flower clusters that may be white, green, pink, or purple.
Velvet Underground, the: American band of the 1960s whose primal guitar sound and urban-noir lyrics, influenced by avant-garde art and modern literature, inspired the punk and alternative rock movements of the 1970s and ...
velvet water bug: any member of the relatively rare insect family Hebridae (about 120 species) of the order Heteroptera. The small, plump insects are usually less than 3 mm (0.1 inch) long. Their ...
velvet worm: any of about 70 wormlike species of ancient, terrestrial invertebrates with short, thick legs and a dry, velveteen body. Onychophorans range in size from 14 to 150 mm (about 0.6 ...
velveteen: in textiles, fabric with a short, dense pile surface and a smooth back, usually made of cotton and resembling velvet. It is made by the filling-pile method, in which the ...
velvetleaf: any of various plants with soft, velvety leaves, particularly Abutilon theophrasti (sometimes A. avicennae), commonly known as Indian mallow, an annual, hairy plant of the mallow family (Malvaceae). Native to ...
velvety shore bug: any insect of the family Ochteridae (order Heteroptera), which numbers about 25 species. These insects resemble tiny toads, are about 4 or 5 mm (almost 0.2 inch) long, and live ...
vena cava: in air-breathing vertebrates, including humans, either of two major trunks, the anterior and posterior venae cavae, that deliver oxygen-depleted blood to the right side of the heart. The anterior vena ...
Venango: county, northwestern Pennsylvania, U.S., consisting of a hilly region on the Allegheny Plateau that is located midway between the cities of Erie and Pittsburgh and is bisected by the Allegheny ...
venationes: (Latin: "animal hunts"), in ancient Rome, type of public spectacle that featured animal hunts.
Venda: former republic (though never internationally recognized as such) in southern Africa. It consisted of an enclave within the Transvaal, Republic of South Africa, just south of Zimbabwe. Its capital, formerly ...
Venda: a Bantu-speaking people inhabiting the region of the Republic of South Africa known from 1979 to 1994 as the Republic of Venda. The area is now part of Northern Transvaal ...
Vendee, Wars of the: (1793-96), counterrevolutionary insurrections in the west of France during the French Revolution. The first and most important occurred in 1793 in the area known as the Vendee, which included large ...
vending machine: coin-actuated machine through which various goods may be retailed. Vending machines should not be confused with coin-operated amusement games or music machines. The first known commercial use of vending machines ...
Vendome: historic town and capital of an arrondissement in the departement of Loir-et-Cher, Centre region, north-central France. It lies southwest of Paris and 20 miles (30 km) northwest of Blois. Vendome ...
Vendome, Cesar, Duke de: leader in several aristocratic revolts during the reign of King Louis XIII of France (ruled 1610-43).
Vendome, Louis-Joseph, duc de: one of King Louis XIV's leading generals during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14).
Vendsyssel-Thy: (North Jutland Island), island at the north end of Jutland, Denmark, known as Vendsyssel in the east and Thy in the west. The Limfjorden separates it from the mainland, to ...
veneer: extremely thin sheet of rich-coloured wood (such as mahogany, ebony, or rosewood) or precious materials (such as ivory or tortoiseshell) cut in decorative patterns and applied to the surface area ...
Venera: any of a series of unmanned Soviet planetary probes that were sent to Venus. Venera 2 (launched 1965) flew to within 24,000 km (15,000 miles) of Venus in February 1966, ...
venerable: title or respectful form of address, used from very early times in Europe, especially for certain clergy or for laymen of marked spiritual merit. St. Augustine in some epistles cited ...
venereal disease: any of a number of contagious diseases that are most commonly acquired in sexual intercourse. See sexually transmitted disease.
Venericardia: genus of pelecypods (clams) abundant during the Eocene Epoch (the Eocene Epoch began 57.8 million years ago and ended 36.6 million years ago). The shell, composed of two halves (valves), ...
Venetan: group of dialects of Italian spoken in northeastern Italy. It includes the dialects spoken in Venice (Venetian), Verona (Veronese), Treviso (Trevisan), and Padua (Paduan).
Veneti: ancient people of northeastern Italy, who arrived about 1000 BC and occupied country stretching south to the Po and west to the neighbourhood of Verona. They left more than 400 ...
Veneti: ancient Celtic people who lived in what is now the Morbihan district of modern Brittany. By the time of Julius Caesar they controlled all Atlantic trade to Britain. They submitted ...
Venetia: territory of northeastern Italy and western Slovenia between the Alps and the Po River and opening on the Adriatic Sea. Italians often use the name Veneto for the region around ...
Venetian glass: variety of glasswares made in Venice from the 13th century, at the latest, to the present. Although a glassblowers' guild existed in Venice from 1224, the earliest extant specimens that ...
Venetian needle lace: Venetian lace made with a needle from the 16th to the 19th century. Early examples were deep, acute-angled points, each worked separately and linked together by a narrow band, or ...
Venetian school: Renaissance art and artists, especially painters, of the city of Venice. Like rivals Florence and Rome, Venice enjoyed periods of importance and influence in the continuum of western European art, ...
Venetic language: a language spoken in northeastern Italy before the Christian era. Known to modern scholars from some 200 short inscriptions dating from the 5th through the 1st century BC, it is ...
Veneto: regione, northern and northeastern Italy, comprising the provincie of Venezia, Padova, Rovigo, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso, and Belluno. It is bounded by Trentino-Alto Adige (north), Emilia-Romagna (south), Lombardia (west), Austria (northeast), ...
Venette, Jean de: French chronicler who left a valuable eyewitness report of events of the central France of his time.