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Worcester ... Worthenia

Worcester: county, central Massachusetts, U.S., bordered on the north by New Hampshire and on the south by Rhode Island and Connecticut. It is an upland region, the principal streams being the ...
Worcester Art Museum: in Worcester, Mass., one of the finest small art museums in the United States, whose chronologically arranged collections span 50 centuries and whose exhibitions are often major events in the ...
Worcester porcelain: pottery ware made, under various managements, at a factory in Worcester, Eng., from 1751 until the present; the factory became the Worcester Royal Porcelain Company in 1862. Although the technical ...
Worcester, Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of: prominent Royalist during the English Civil Wars.
Worcester, John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of: noted English Yorkist leader during the Wars of the Roses, known for his brutality and abuse of the law and called the "butcher of England."
Worcester, Joseph Emerson: American lexicographer whose dictionaries rivaled those of Noah Webster in popularity and critical esteem from about 1830 to 1865. His introduction of synonyms to definitions, as well as other innovations, ...
Worcester, Thomas Percy, Earl of: English noble, brother of Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, and uncle of Sir Henry Percy, called "Hotspur," and a party to their rebellions against Henry IV of England.
Worcestershire: administrative and historic county of England, located in the West Midlands region.
word processing: operation by which written, verbal, or recorded information is transformed into typewritten or printed form. A word-processing system can produce a wide variety of documents, including letters, memoranda, and manuals, ...
word processor: computer program used to write and revise documents, compose the layout of the text, and preview on a computer monitor how the printed copy will appear. The last capability is ...
Worde, Wynkyn de: Alsatian-born printer in London, an astute businessman who published a large number of books (at least 600 titles from 1501). He was also the first printer in England to use ...
Worden, John L: U.S. naval officer who commanded the Union warship Monitor against the Confederate Virginia (formerly Merrimack) in the first battle between ironclads (March 9, 1862) in the American Civil War (1861-65).
Wordsworth, Dorothy: English prose writer whose Alfoxden Journal 1798 and Grasmere Journals 1800-03 are read today for the imaginative power of their description of nature, their perfection of style, and their revelation ...
Wordsworth, William: major English Romantic poet and poet laureate of England (1843-50). His Lyrical Ballads (1798), written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the English Romantic movement.
work: in economics and sociology, the activities and labour necessary to the survival of society.
work: in physics, measure of energy transfer that occurs when an object is moved over a distance by an external force at least part of which is applied in the direction ...
work hardening: in metallurgy, increase in hardness of a metal induced, deliberately or accidentally, by hammering, rolling, drawing, or other physical processes. Although the first few deformations imposed on metal by such ...
work song: any song that belongs to either of two broad categories: songs used as a rhythmic accompaniment to a task and songs used to make a statement about work. Used by ...
work, history of the organization of: history of the methods by which society structures the activities and labour necessary to its survival.
worker-priest: in the Roman Catholic church, member of a movement, especially in France and Belgium after World War II, seeking to reach the working classes, who had become largely alienated from ...
workers' compensation: social-welfare program through which employers bear some of the cost of their employees' work-related injuries and occupational diseases. Workers' compensation was first introduced in Germany in 1884, and by the ...
Workers' Opposition: in the history of the Soviet Union, a group within the Communist Party that achieved prominence in 1920-21 as a champion of workers' rights and trade union control over industry. ...
workhouse: institution to provide employment for paupers and sustenance for the infirm, found in England from the 17th through the 19th century and also in such countries as The Netherlands and ...
Workingmen's Party: first labour-oriented political organization in the United States. Established first in Philadelphia in 1828 and then in New York in 1829, the party emanated out of the concerns of craftsmen ...
Workington: town and port in Allerdale district, administrative county of Cumbria, historic county of Cumberland, northwestern England, on the Solway Firth where it joins the Irish Sea. The town lies at ...
Works Progress Administration: work program for the unemployed that was created in 1935 under U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. While critics called the WPA an extension of the dole or a ...
Worksop: town, Bassetlaw district, administrative and historic county of Nottinghamshire, England. It lies along the Chesterfield Canal close to Sherwood Forest. The priory church in the town dates partly from the ...
workstation: a high-performance computer system that is basically designed for a single user and has advanced graphics capabilities, large storage capacity, and a powerful microprocessor (central processing unit). A workstation is ...
Worku, Daniachew: Ethiopian writer of drama, fiction, poetry, and literary history, best known outside Ethiopia for his novel in English, The Thirteenth Sun (1973).
Worland: city, seat (1912) of Washakie county, north-central Wyoming, U.S., on the Bighorn River. Settled in 1900 on the west side of the river as a stagecoach stop called Camp Worland, ...
World Alliance of Reformed Churches: cooperative international organization of Presbyterian, Congregational, and Reformed churches that was formed in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1970 by the merger of the International Congregational Council with the Alliance of the ...
World Bank: international organization affiliated with the United Nations (UN) and designed to finance projects that enhance the economic development of member states. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the bank is the largest ...
World Book Encyclopedia, The: American encyclopaedia designed to meet the curriculum needs of elementary through high-school students. It is published in Chicago, Ill.
World Confederation of Labour: labour confederation founded as the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions in 1920 to represent the interests of Christian labour unions in western Europe and Latin America. It was reconstituted ...
World Convention of Churches of Christ: international agency of the Disciples of Christ. Its headquarters are in New York City. It exercises no authority over its member churches but does provide a means for fellowship and ...
World Council of Churches: ecumenical organization founded in 1948 in Amsterdam as "a fellowship of Churches which accept Jesus Christ our Lord as God and Saviour." The WCC is not a church, nor does ...
World Council of Service Clubs: cooperative organization formed in 1946 by several international associations of young men's service clubs for the purpose of furthering international cooperation and understanding and to encourage the extension of such ...
World Cup: in football (soccer), trophy that symbolizes the world championship. The first competition for the cup was organized in 1930 by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and was won ...
World Cup: in golf, trophy awarded to the winner of an annual competition for two-man professional teams representing nations. It was initiated in 1953 by the Canadian industrialist John Jay Hopkins. The ...
World Cup: in skiing, trophy awarded annually since 1967 to the top male and female alpine skiers. In World Cup competition, skiers accumulate points in the three alpine events (downhill, slalom, and ...
World Evangelical Fellowship: international fellowship of organizations that hold biblically conservative interpretations of the Christian faith. See Evangelical Alliance.
World Federation of Trade Unions: leftist-oriented international labour organization founded in 1945 by the World Trade Union Congress. Its principal organizers were the British Trades Union Congress, the U.S. Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the ...
World Food Council: United Nations (UN) organization established by the General Assembly in December 1974 upon the recommendation of the World Food Conference. Headquartered in Rome, Italy, the WFC was designed as a ...
World Food Programme: organization established in 1961 by the United Nations (UN) to help alleviate world hunger. Its headquarters are in Rome, Italy.
World Health Organization: specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1948 to further international cooperation for improved health conditions. Although it inherited specific tasks relating to epidemic control, quarantine measures, and drug ...
World Heritage site: any of various areas or objects inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List. The sites are designated as ...
World Intellectual Property Organization: international organization designed to promote the worldwide protection of both industrial property (inventions, trademarks, and designs) and copyrighted materials (literary, musical, photographic, and other artistic works). The organization, established by ...
World Meteorological Organization: specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) created to promote the establishment of a worldwide meteorological observation system, the application of meteorology to other fields, and the development of national ...
World Methodist Council: cooperative organization of Methodist churches that provides a means for consultation and cooperation on an international level. It maintains various committees that are concerned with doctrine, evangelism, education, lay activities, ...
world music: musical genre defined largely in response to the sudden increase of recordings in non-English languages that were released in Great Britain and the United States in the 1980s. Employed primarily ...
World Series: in baseball, a postseason playoff series between champions of the two major professional baseball leagues of the United States: the American League (AL) and the National League (NL).
World Trade Center: complex of several buildings around a central plaza in New York City that in 2001 was the site of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. (See September 11 attacks.) ...
World Trade Organization: international organization established to supervise and liberalize world trade. The WTO is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947 in the ...
world tree: centre of the world, a widespread motif in many myths and folktales among various preliterate peoples, especially in Asia, Australia, and North America, by which they understand the human and ...
World War I: an international conflict that in 1914-18 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. The war pitted the Central ...
World War II: conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers-Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies-France, Great Britain, the United States, ...
World Weather Watch: program established in 1961-62 by the World Meteorological Organization to improve the global system for meteorological observation and prediction. It is designed to avoid duplication in preparing analyses and prognoses, ...
World Wide Web: the leading information retrieval service of the Internet (q.v.; the worldwide computer network). The Web gives users access to a vast array of documents that are connected to each other ...
World's Columbian Exposition: fair held in 1893 in Chicago, Ill., to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America.
World-Soul: soul ascribed to the physical universe, on the analogy of the soul ascribed to human beings and other living organisms. This concept of a spiritual principle, intelligence, or mind present ...
worm: any of various unrelated invertebrate animals that typically have soft, slender, elongated bodies and usually lack appendages. Worms are members of several invertebrate phyla, including Platyhelminthes (flatworms), Annelida (segmented worms), ...
worm lizard: (Rhineura floridana), lizard that has no limbs or external eyes or ears and is a North American member of the family Amphisbaenidae. The worm lizard can be found burrowing in ...
worm shell: any marine snail of the family Vermetidae (subclass Prosobranchia, class Gastropoda). The shell of these snails consists of an irregularly coiled, narrow tube that resembles a worm. Most species of ...
worm snake: any of various harmless burrowing snakes of wormlike appearance. This name is often given to blind snakes of the family Typhlopidae. The American worm snake (Carphophis amoena), of the eastern ...
Wormley Conference: (Feb. 26, 1877), in American history, meeting at Wormley's Hotel in Washington, D.C., at which leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties resolved the disputed Rutherford B. Hayes-Samuel J. Tilden ...
Worms: city, Rhineland-Palatinate Land (state), southwestern Germany. Worms is a port on the left (west) bank of the Rhine River, just northwest of Mannheim. Known originally as Celtic ...
Worms, Concordat of: compromise arranged in 1122 between Pope Calixtus II (1119-24) and the Holy Roman emperor Henry V (reigned 1106-25) settling the Investiture Controversy, a struggle between the empire and the papacy ...
wormwood: any bitter or aromatic herb or shrub of the genus Artemisia of the family Asteraceae, distributed throughout many parts of the world. These plants have many small, greenish yellow flower ...
Worpswede school: group of artists who settled after 1889 in the north German village of Worpswede, near Bremen, in order to paint the local landscape. They depicted the heaths, meadows, forests, streams, ...
Worrell, Sir Frank: exceptional all-around cricket player and captain (1960-63) of the West Indies international team, which under his leadership achieved world cricket supremacy in the early 1960s. Worrell, Everton D. Weekes, and ...
Worsaae, Jens Jacob Asmussen: Danish archaeologist, a principal founder of prehistoric archaeology. His Danmarks Oldtid oplyst ved Oldsager og Gravhoie (1843; The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark) was one of the most influential archaeological works ...
worship: broadly defined, the response to the appearance of that which is accepted as the holy-that is, to a sacred, transcendent power or being. Characteristic modes of response to the holy ...
worsted knitting yarn: wool yarn made of long-staple fibres that have been combed to remove undesirable short fibres and make them lie parallel. In the spinning operation, which imparts the necessary twist to ...
Worth, Charles Frederick: pioneer fashion designer and founder of Parisian haute couture.
Worth, Irene: American actress noted for her versatility and aristocratic bearing. Although she had her greatest success on the stages of London's West End, she also earned three Tony awards for her ...
Worthenia: genus of extinct gastropods (snails) preserved as common fossils in rocks of Devonian to Triassic age (408 to 208 million years old) but especially characteristic of Late Carboniferous deposits (320 ...