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venule (anatomy)
...that they receive and distribute. From the capillaries, the blood, now depleted of oxygen and burdened with waste products, moving more slowly and under low pressure, enters small vessels called venules that converge to form veins, ultimately guiding the blood on its way back to the heart....
Venus (Illinois, United States)
city, Hancock county, western Illinois, U.S. It lies along the Mississippi River, about 30 miles (50 km) southwest of Burlington, Iowa. The area was long inhabited by Sauk and Fox Indians before American settlement. Permanent settlement was begun in 1824 by Captain James White, and the area soon became k...
Venus (Roman goddess)
ancient Italian goddess associated with cultivated fields and gardens and later identified by the Romans with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite....
Venus (film by Michell)
...Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, The Lion in Winter, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year, and Venus (2006); in 2002 he was awarded an honorary Oscar. He received an Emmy Award for his performance as Bishop Cauchon in the television....
Venus (planet)
Second major planet from the Sun....
Venus and Adonis (poem by Shakespeare)
...a munificent patron of writers, including Barnabe Barnes, Thomas Nashe, and Gervase Markham. He is best known, however, as the patron of Shakespeare, who dedicated the poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) to him. It has also been argued, albeit inconclusively, that Shakespeare’s sonnets were addressed to hi...
Venus and Adonis (painting by Titian)
...in pairs, but otherwise they do not constitute a comprehensive iconographic program. The first pair (still in Madrid) consists of the Danae with Nursemaid and the Venus and Adonis. The magnificent nude Danae lies upon her couch, knees raised, as Jupiter descends to her in the form of golden rain, and her nursemaid rather amusingly......
Venus and Adonis (opera by Blow)
organist and composer, remembered for his church music and for Venus and Adonis, which is regarded as the earliest surviving English opera....
Venus and Adonis stanza (poetry)
a stanza consisting of an iambic pentameter quatrain and couplet with the rhyme scheme ababcc. The stanza was so called because it was used by William Shakespeare in his poem Venus and Adonis (1593)....
Venus and Cupid with an Organist (painting by Titian)
The Venus and Cupid with an Organist and the Venus and the Lute Player are variations on the theme of the earlier Venus of Urbino. Aside from the emphasis on the idealized beauty of the nude goddess, it is generally believed that symbolism is involved in these pictures, although the precise meanings have been......
Venus and Mars (painting by Botticelli)
...are four of Botticelli’s most famous works: Primavera (c. 1477–82), Pallas and the Centaur (c. 1485), Venus and Mars (c. 1485), and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485 [see above]). The Primavera, or ...
Venus and the Lute Player (painting by Titian)
The Venus and Cupid with an Organist and the Venus and the Lute Player are variations on the theme of the earlier Venus of Urbino. Aside from the emphasis on the idealized beauty of the nude goddess, it is generally believed that symbolism is involved in these pictures, although the precise meanings have been......
venus clam (bivalve)
...mercenaria), also known as the cherrystone clam, littleneck clam, or hard-shell clam, and the southern quahog (M. campechiensis) belong to the family of venus clams (Veneridae). M. mercenaria is about 7.5 to 12.5 cm (3 to 5 inches) long. The dingy white shell, which is thick and rounded and has prominent concentric lines, is found in the......
Venus comb (marine snail)
marine snail, a species of murex....
Venus de Milo (sculpture)
ancient statue of Aphrodite, now in Paris at the Louvre. Carved by Alexandros, a sculptor of Antioch on the Maeander River in about 150 bc, it was found on the Aegean island of Melos on April 8, 1820. An inscription that is not displayed with the statue states that “Alexandros, son of ...
Venus Express (European Space Agency spacecraft)
European Space Agency spacecraft that orbited the planet Venus. The design of Venus Express was based on that of the earlier Mars Express. It was launched on Nov. 9, 2005, by a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket and went into orbit around Venus on April 11, 2006. Near-infrared and other instr...
Venus figurine (archaeology)
Neanderthals and other prehistoric peoples used natural amulets in burials, and so-called Venus figurines dating to about 25,000 bc may be among the earliest of man-made amulets. The MacGregor papyrus of ancient Egypt lists 75 amulets. One of the commonest was the scarab beetle, worn by the living and dead alike. The scarab (q.v.) symbolized life—perhaps because it push...
Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in Her Smock (book)
...Edmund Curll became the first person to be convicted on a charge of obscenity in England in the common law (as opposed to the ecclesiastical) courts, for his publication of a new edition of Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in Her Smock, a mildly pornographic work that had been written several decades earlier; his sentence, a fine and one hour in the pillory, was delayed because.....
Venus of Urbino (painting by Titian)
The standard for the reclining nude female obliquely placed in the picture space was established by Giorgione in the Sleeping Venus. In Titian’s Venus of Urbino the ideal rendering of the body and the position remain virtually unchanged, except that the goddess is awake and reclines upon a couch within the spacious room of a palace. ...
Venus, Temple of (building, Baiae, Italy)
...the late Republic. Reminiscent in its present condition of the Pantheon, it was the swimming pool of a large bath. The “temples” of Venus and Diana are of the Hadrianic period (2nd century ad) and are somewhat larger. Venus, which is 86 feet (26.3 metres) in diameter, was also a bath’s swimming pool, while...
“Venus Victrix” (sculpture by Canova)
...(1783–87) and Clement XIII (1787–92) and statues of Napoleon and of his sister Princess Borghese reclining as Venus Victrix. He was created a marquis for his part in retrieving works of art from Paris after Napoleon’s defeat....
Venus with a Mirror (painting by Titian)
The Venus with a Mirror (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), the one original among several versions, is a natural theme for the goddess of love and beauty. Yet Titian is the first artist to show her with a mirror held by Cupid. Her form is somewhat more heroic than hitherto, and her head to a limited degree is inspired by ancient sculpture. The superb......
Venusia (Italy)
town and episcopal see, Basilicata regione, southern Italy. It is situated on the lower slope of Mount Vulcano, north of Potenza. Originally a settlement of the Lucanians (an ancient Italic tribe), it was taken by the Romans after the Samnite Wars (291 bc); from its position on the Appian Way...
Venus’s flower basket (sponge)
any of several sponges of the genus Euplectella, especially E. aspergillum (class Hexactinellida, glass sponges). The name Venus’s flower basket derives from the sponges’ delicate, white, latticelike skeletons made of silica. In the living animal the skeleton is covered by a thin layer of cells. E. aspergillum is found in a small area ...
Venus’s girdle (jellyfish)
(Cestum veneris) ribbon-shaped comb jelly of the order Cestida (phylum Ctenophora) found in the Mediterranean Sea. Its graceful, transparent body, which is a delicate violet in colour, is 1 metre (about 40 inches) or more l...
Venus’s looking glass (plant)
(Legousia, or Specularia, speculum-veneris), species of annual herb of the bellflower family (Campanulaceae), native to sandy, sunny parts of the Mediterranean region. It is grown as a garden ornamental for its blue, violet, or white, wide-open, bell-shaped...
Venus’s-flytrap (plant)
(species Dionaea muscipula), flowering perennial plant of the sundew family (Droseraceae), notable for its unusual habit of catching and digesting insects and other small animals. The only member of its genus, the plant is native to a small region of North and South...
Venus’s-hairstone (mineral)
variety of quartz interspersed with fine crystals of the mineral rutile....
venustas (architecture)
This Latin term for “beauty” (literally, the salient qualities possessed by the goddess Venus) clearly implied a visual quality in architecture that would arouse the emotion of love; but it is of interest to note that one of the crucial aspects of this problem was already anticipated by Alberti in the 15th century, as is made clear by his substitution of the word amoenitas......
Venuti, Joe (American musician)
...in boyhood; his father, who made fretted stringed instruments, taught him to play guitar. In the early 1920s he played with former schoolmate Joe Venuti in Atlantic City, N.J., and then toured with the Mound City Blue Blowers. He settled in ......
Venutius (king of Brigantes)
...who had fled to Brigantium to rally support for his cause, and turned him over to the Romans. In so doing she assured continuation of Roman support. From 52 to 57, when her husband and coruler, Venutius, twice attempted to overthrow her by stirring up anti-Roman sentiment, the Roman legions put down the uprisings. Venutius and Cartimandua were reconciled and reigned together until 69, when......
Venyukovia (fossil reptile)
genus of extinct mammallike reptiles (therapsids) that are found as fossils in Permian deposits in eastern Europe (the Permian Period began 299,000,000 years ago and lasted 48,000,000 years). Venyukovia was herbivorous, with primitive teeth; it is thought that Venyukovia may well have been the ancestor of an im...
Vep (people)
...section: the Mordvin, Mari (formerly Cheremis), Udmurt (Votyak) and Komi (Zyryan), and the closely related Komi-Permyaks live around the upper Volga and in the Urals, while Karelians, Finns, and Veps inhabit the northwest. The Mansi (Vogul) and Khanty (Ostyak) are spread thinly over the lower Ob basin (see Khanty and Mansi)....
“Vepkhis-tqaosani” (work by Rustaveli)
Georgian poet, author of Vepkhvistqaosani (The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, or The Lord of the Panther-Skin), the Georgian national epic....
“Vepkhvistqaosani” (work by Rustaveli)
Georgian poet, author of Vepkhvistqaosani (The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, or The Lord of the Panther-Skin), the Georgian national epic....
“Vêpres siciliennes, Les” (opera by Verdi)
His first essay in the new manner, Les Vêpres siciliennes (1855; The Sicilian Vespers), is a rather cold piece that has had only lukewarm success from its premiere on. The fault lay partly in the libretto—by Meyerbeer’s own librettist, the poet Eugène Scribe; Scribe merely refashioned an old piece he had written fo...
Veps language
The five less-numerous Baltic-Finnic groups—Karelian, Veps, Ingrian, Votic, and Livonian—lie within Russia and the Baltic nations, largely in the general vicinity of the Gulf of Finland. The Karelians, Veps, and Livonians were among the original Baltic-Finnic tribes; Votic is considered to be an offshoot of Estonian, and Ingrian a remote branch of Karelian. None of these languages......
VER (economics)
Another barrier is the voluntary export restraint (VER), noted for having a less-damaging effect on the political relations between countries. It is also relatively easy to remove. This approach was applied in the early 1980s when Japanese automakers, under pressure from U.S. competitors, “voluntarily” limited their exports of automobiles to the U.S. market. Like quotas, VERs limit.....
Ver, Fabian C. (Filipino politician)
...demonstrations charging government complicity in the act. An independent commission concluded in October 1984 that a military conspiracy led by the Philippine armed forces chief of staff, General Fabian C. Ver, was responsible for the assassination. Ver and 25 other suspected participants in the plot were acquitted of these charges by three Marcos-appointed judges in 1985....
“Ver-Vert” (work by Gresset)
French poet and dramatist who received immediate and lasting acclaim for his irreverently comic narrative poem Ver-Vert (1734; Ver-Vert, or the Nunnery Parrot), describing with wit tinged with malice the adventures of a parrot who attempts to maintain his decorous convent background while on a visit to another convent....
Ver-Vert, or the Nunnery Parrot (work by Gresset)
French poet and dramatist who received immediate and lasting acclaim for his irreverently comic narrative poem Ver-Vert (1734; Ver-Vert, or the Nunnery Parrot), describing with wit tinged with malice the adventures of a parrot who attempts to maintain his decorous convent background while on a visit to another convent....
Vera (American artist)
(VERA NEUMANN), U.S. artist and designer (b. July 24, 1910, Stamford, Conn.--d. June 15, 1993, North Tarrytown, N.Y.), created brightly coloured scarves, bedroom and kitchen linens, and draperies and sportswear that bore her name. Vera, who had been a designer of children’s furniture and murals, used only her first name after founding (...
“Vera Christiana Religio” (work by Swedenborg)
...and on Hell) is perhaps his best-known theological work. He gave an admirably clear summary of his theological thinking in his last work, the Vera Christiana Religio (1771; True Christian Religion), which was written when he was 83....
Vera Circuli et Hyperbolae Quadratura (work by Gregory)
...Gregory visited The Hague and Paris before settling in Padua, Italy, to study geometry, mechanics, and astronomy. While in Italy he wrote Vera Circuli et Hyperbolae Quadratura (1667; “The True Squaring of the Circle and of the Hyperbola”) and Geometriae Pars Universalis (1668; “The Universal Part of......
Vera Cruz
Country, east-central South America....
Verá, Lake (lake, Paraguay)
Paraguay has only two lakes of consequence. The largest, Lake Ypoá, about 40 miles (65 km) south of Asunción, merges into Lake Verá; it is drained by channels of the Tebicuary and feeds the marshes of the Ñeembucú plain. Lake Ypacaraí, about 30 miles (50 km) east of Asunción, is the site of a favourite summer resort at ......
Veracruz (state, Mexico)
estado (state), east-central Mexico. Veracruz is bounded by the state of Tamaulipas to the north, by the Gulf of Mexico to the east, and by the states of Tabasco and Chiapas to the southeast, Oaxaca to the southwest, and Puebla...
Veracruz (Mexico)
city and port on the Gulf of Mexico, Veracruz estado (state), east-central Mexico....
Veracruz Blues (Mexican baseball team)
...the 1930s and ’40s. The most productive period of his career, however, was spent in Mexico. The colour barrier in the United States and the lure of higher salaries in Mexico landed Dandridge on the Veracruz Blues, a team that featured other Negro League stars, including Willie Wells, Josh Gibson, and Cool Papa Bell. Dandridge played in the Mexican League for eight seasons—for both...
Veracruz incident (United States-Mexican history)
(April 21–Nov. 14, 1914), the occupation of Veracruz, the chief port on the east coast of Mexico, by military forces of the United States during the civil wars of the Mexican Revolution....
Veracruz Llave (Mexico)
city and port on the Gulf of Mexico, Veracruz estado (state), east-central Mexico....
Veralden-olmai (Sami deity)
(Sami: “Ruler of the World”), the deity believed by the Sami (Lapps) to be closest to the starry heaven. Because the deity is associated with mailmen stytto, the pillar supporting the heavens, he is also responsible for the continued maintenance of life and is considered a fertility god. Veralden-radien is believed to support all growth. The goddess of childbirth, Ma...
Veralden-radien (Sami deity)
(Sami: “Ruler of the World”), the deity believed by the Sami (Lapps) to be closest to the starry heaven. Because the deity is associated with mailmen stytto, the pillar supporting the heavens, he is also responsible for the continued maintenance of life and is considered a fertility god. Veralden-radien is believed to support all growth. The goddess of childbirth, Ma...
Verān (mountain pass, Asia)
...of lesser mountains. Glaciers are poorly developed, but the mountain passes—which include Putsigrām (13,450 feet [5,000 metres]), Verān (15,400 feet [4,694 metres]), Rām Gol (15,400 feet [4,694 metres]), and Anjoman (13,850 feet [4,221 metres])—are high, making transmontane communications difficult....
veranda (architecture)
in architecture, most frequently, an open-walled, roofed porch attached to the exterior of a domestic structure and usually surrounded by a railing. The word came into English through the Hindi varandā, but it is related to the Spanish baranda, meaning “railing,” and thus most likely entered Hindi via Portuguese explorers of India....
verapamil (drug)
In the mid-1970s the calcium channel blockers, another type of antiarrhythmic drug, were introduced. Verapamil and diltiazem are important examples of this class of drugs. They reduce the influx of calcium ions through the cell membrane, which normally occurs when the cell is depolarized. This movement of calcium ions across the membrane......
Verapaz (historical province, Guatemala)
...and Guatemala failed to bring better treatment to the Indians, he went to a province of northern Guatemala to pacify it without military force. His experiment in this province, which he called the Verapaz, was only partially successful, but it served as the basis for his arguments to the Spanish crown against abuse of the Indians. The resulting New Laws of 1542 began the suppression of the......
Vérard, Antoine (French publisher)
...a reputation for careful and elegant work. Their volumes, sumptuous more often than not, were characterized by minute attention to almost extravagant detailing. Books of the hours, introduced by one Antoine Vérard, whose tastes ran to illustrated and heavily ornamented pages bound in deluxe editions, were important influences in these directions. It is estimated that Vérard......
Veratrum (plant genus)
genus of poisonous herbs of the family Melanthiaceae. The genus includes about 25 to 30 perennial species, among them the American hellebore and the European hellebore (see hellebore) and the false hellebore (see skunk cabbage). They bear flowers that are greenish white to brownish purple and are planted as ornamentals. Their poisons have commerc...
Veratrum album (plant)
The genus Veratrum, of the family Melanthiaceae, is composed of about 25–30 species, which are native widely in damp areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The genus includes European white hellebore (V. album), once used as an arrow poison, and American white hellebore (V. viride), also called itchweed. The plants have simple, parallel-veined leaves and terminal clusters......
Veratrum californicum (plant)
...spathe, is found from California to Alaska and eastward to Montana. Another skunk cabbage (Veratrum californicum) is the poisonous corn lily, or false hellebore, which grows from New Mexico and Baja California northward to Washington....
Veratrum viride (plant)
...of about 25–30 species, which are native widely in damp areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The genus includes European white hellebore (V. album), once used as an arrow poison, and American white hellebore (V. viride), also called itchweed. The plants have simple, parallel-veined leaves and terminal clusters of small flowers....
Veraval (India)
city and port, south-central Gujarat state, west-central India. Veraval lies on the Arabian Sea coast of the Kathiawar Peninsula and is part of the Patan urban agglomeration. Its fishing port is one of the country’s largest and also handles tim...
verb (grammar)
The Proto-Indo-European verb had three aspects: imperfective, perfective, and stative. Aspect refers to the nature of an action as described by the speaker—e.g., an event occurring once, an event recurring repeatedly, a continuing process, or a state. The difference between English simple and “progressive” verb forms is largely one of aspect—e.g.,......
verb ending (grammar)
...auxiliaries ‘shall’ and ‘will,’ and -yeH1- alternating with -iH1- for the optative, corresponding roughly to English ‘should’ and ‘would.’ Verbs without one of these two suffixes were marked for mood and tense by their personal endings alone....
verb phrase (grammar)
...The notion of phrase structure may be dealt with independently of its incorporation in the larger system. In the following system of rules, S stands for Sentence, NP for Noun Phrase, VP for Verb Phrase, Det for Determiner, Aux for Auxiliary (verb), N for Noun, and V for Verb stem....
Verba, Sidney (American political scientist)
Perhaps the most important work of political culture was Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba’s The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (1963), which surveyed 1,000-person samples in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Mexico. Almond and Verba identified three types of politica...
Verbal Behavior (work by Skinner)
Chomsky’s 1959 review of Verbal Behavior, by B.F. Skinner, the dean of American behaviourism, came to be regarded as the definitive refutation of behaviourist accounts of language learning. Starting in the mid-1960s, with the publication of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) and Cartesian Linguistics (1966), Chomsky’s approach to......
verbal contract (legal history)
in Roman law, a form of contract based upon a simple question and answer. It had no parallel in other legal systems. Stipulatio developed, at first, with very strict rules. Although no witnesses were required, both parties had to be present during the entire proc...
verbal fallacy (logic)
One main source of temptations to commit a fallacy is a misleading or misunderstood linguistic form of a purported inference; mistakes due to this kind of temptation are known as verbal fallacies. Aristotle recognized six verbal fallacies: those due to equivocation, amphiboly, combination or division of words, accent, and form of expression. Whereas equivocation involves the ambiguity of a......
verbal inspiration (biblical criticism)
...Theological Seminary argued for the verbal (word-for-word) inspiration of Scripture and affirmed that the Bible was not only infallible (correct when it spoke on matters of faith and morals) but inerrant (correct when it spoke on any matters, including history and science)....
verbal irony (literature)
language device, either in spoken or written form in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings of the words (verbal irony) or in a situation in which there is an incongruity between what is expected and what occurs (dramatic irony)....
Verbania (Italy)
commune, Piemonte (Piedmont) regione, northern Italy. Verbania is a summer resort on Lake Maggiore (ancient Verbanus Lacus). Formed in 1939 by the union of the towns of Pallanza and Intra, it has botanical gardens, two 16th-cen...
Verbanus, Lacus (lake, Europe)
second largest lake in Italy (area 82 square miles [212 square km]), bisected by the border between Lombardy (east) and Piedmont (west). Its northern end is in the Swiss Ticino canton. At an elevation of 633 feet (193 m) above sea level, the lake is 34 miles (54 km) long, with a maximum width of 7 miles (11 km) and a ...
Verbascum (plant)
any of the 360 species of the genus Verbascum (family Scrophulariaceae), large biennial or perennial herbs native to northern temperate regions, especially eastern Eurasia. The common mullein (V. thapsus) grows 0.6 to 2 metres (2 to 7 feet) tall, has a single, unbranched stem with large, thick, densely velvety leaves, and has pale-yellow, slightly ...
Verbascum thapsus (plant)
any of the 360 species of the genus Verbascum (family Scrophulariaceae), large biennial or perennial herbs native to northern temperate regions, especially eastern Eurasia. The common mullein (V. thapsus) grows 0.6 to 2 metres (2 to 7 feet) tall, has a single, unbranched stem with large, thick, densely velvety leaves, and has pale-yellow, slightly ......
verbena (Spanish festival)
...points of the year. Important matches are played in two stadiums, Santiago Bernabéu (home of Real Madrid) and Vicente Calderón (Club Atlético). The verbenas, special fiestas held in each quarter in honour of its patron saint, are regular public events, especially in warm weather, with San Isidro (mid-May) taking pride of place. The......
Verbena (plant genus)
genus of plants in the family Verbenaceae that contains several species of garden flowers. Verbena consists of some 200 to 250 species, almost all of them native to the tropical and subtropical Americas, including 20 in the United States. Two species are indigeno...
Verbena family (plant family)
family of plants, in the order Lamiales, a worldwide but mainly tropical grouping of 30 genera and some 1,100 species, some of which are important for their flowers. Members of the family, sometimes known as Verbena or Vervain, have opposite or whorled leaves that are usually undivided. The flowers are aggregated in spikes, clusters, or racem...
Verbena hastata (plant)
...also sometimes cultivated as garden flowers. Most other species in the United States are low-growing, small-flowered, somewhat weedy plants that are referred to as vervains rather than verbenas. The blue vervain (V. hastata) reaches a height of 1.5 metres (5 feet) and produces spikes of blue to purple flowers. The Eurasian species V. officinalis was once considered a ......
Verbena hortensis (plant)
The best-known species is the common garden verbena (V. hortensis, or hybrida), which is derived from various South American species. This square-stemmed, creeping plant bears flat heads of phloxlike flowers that sometimes have yellow eyes. Its flowers range in colour from pure white to pink, red, blue, violet, and yellow and......
Verbena hybrida (plant)
The best-known species is the common garden verbena (V. hortensis, or hybrida), which is derived from various South American species. This square-stemmed, creeping plant bears flat heads of phloxlike flowers that sometimes have yellow eyes. Its flowers range in colour from pure white to pink, red, blue, violet, and yellow and......
verbena, lemon (plant)
(Aloysia citriodora or Lippia citriodora), tropical perennial shrub belonging to the family Verbenaceae, originating in Argentina and Chile. Growing more than 3 metres (10 feet) high in warm climates, it is also grown as a potted plant reaching a height of about 25.4 cm (10 inches)....
Verbenaceae (plant family)
family of plants, in the order Lamiales, a worldwide but mainly tropical grouping of 30 genera and some 1,100 species, some of which are important for their flowers. Members of the family, sometimes known as Verbena or Vervain, have opposite or whorled leaves that are usually undivided. The flowers are aggregated in spikes, clusters, or racem...
verbenarius (Roman religion)
According to Book 1 of Livy’s history of Rome, after Rome had been injured by another state, four fetials were sent out to seek redress. One member, the verbenarius, carried herbs gathered from the Arx on the Capitoline Hill. Another member, called the pater patratus, served as the group’s representative. Upon reaching the border of the offending state, the pater pat...
Verbiest, Ferdinand (Jesuit missionary)
Dutch Jesuit missionary and astronomer who became an influential official in the Chinese government....
Verbindungen (German fighting corps)
...Mensur (student duel) is still a feature of German university life as a form of sporting event. Most German universities have long-established Verbindungen (fighting corps) with strict rules, secret meetings, distinctive uniforms, and great prestige. In such duels, which involve a method of swordplay distinct from that of normal......
verbivocovisual expression (poetry)
...and Invenção. Concrete poetry attempts to move away from a purely verbal concept of verse toward what its proponents call “verbivocovisual expression,” incorporating geometric and graphic elements into the poetic act or process. Their experiments have included the use of ideograms as a substitute for verbal forms,......
Verbruggen, Hendrik Frans (Flemish sculptor)
...(1713) and the Treaty of Rastatt (1714) the territories passed to Austria. Eighteenth-century painting and sculpture became increasingly weak and provincial, though fantastic pulpits carved by Hendrik Frans Verbruggen, Michel Vervoort, and Theodor Verhaegen provide a remarkable parallel to those in central Europe....
Vercellae (Italy)
city, capital of Vercelli provincia, Piemonte (Piedmont) regione, northwestern Italy. It lies along the Sesia River, southwest of Novara. The chief city of the Libici (a Ligurian tribe), it later became a Roman municipium (town). The Campi Raudii (Raudian Fields) to the south were the ...
Vercelli (Italy)
city, capital of Vercelli provincia, Piemonte (Piedmont) regione, northwestern Italy. It lies along the Sesia River, southwest of Novara. The chief city of the Libici (a Ligurian tribe), it later became a Roman municipium (town). The Campi Raudii (Raudian Fields) to the south were the ...
Vercelli Book (Old English literature)
Old English manuscript written in the late 10th century. It contains texts of the poem Andreas, two poems by Cynewulf, The Dream of the Rood, an “Address of the Saved Soul to the Body,” and a fragment of a homiletic poem, as well as 23 prose homilies and a prose life of St. Guthlac, the Vercell...
Verchoiansk (Russia)
town, Sakha (Yakutiya), far northeastern Russia, on the Yana River near its confluence with the Sartang. Founded as a fort in 1638 and today a minor centre of tin and gold mining, Verkhoyansk is noted chiefly for its exceptionally low winter temperatures, with a January average of −56 °F (−49 °C)....
Verchojansk (Russia)
town, Sakha (Yakutiya), far northeastern Russia, on the Yana River near its confluence with the Sartang. Founded as a fort in 1638 and today a minor centre of tin and gold mining, Verkhoyansk is noted chiefly for its exceptionally low winter temperatures, with a January average of −56 °F (−49 °C)....
Verchojansk Mountains (mountains, Russia)
mountains of Sakha (Yakutiya), far northeastern Russia, extending for 700 miles (1,100 km)—in a huge arc parallel to and east of the lower Lena River—to the Laptev Sea. The range represents a major anticlinal structure, created in a perio...
Vercingetorix (Gallic chieftain)
chieftain of the Gallic tribe of the Arverni whose formidable rebellion against Roman rule was crushed by Julius Caesar....
Vercingétorix (opera by Canteloube)
Although his folk-song settings have won a degree of popularity, Canteloube’s original works, which include the operas Le Mas and Vercingétorix (performed at the Paris Opéra in 1929 and 1933, respectively), have been neglected. He also edited the Anthologie des chants populaires français (1939–44)....
Vercors (French author)
French novelist and artist-engraver, who wrote Le Silence de la mer (1941; The Silence of the Sea), a patriotic tale of self-deception and of the triumph of passive resistance over evil. The novella was published clandestinely in Nazi-occupied Paris and served to rally a spirit of French defi...
Vercors Plateau (plateau, France)
...are massive folded and faulted limestones and dolomites that underlie alpine karst terrain from France to the Balkan Peninsula. In France the Vercors Plateau is pavement karst featuring many deep caves, including the Berger Shaft—one of the deepest in Europe. The Hölloch Cave, the world’s third longest at 133 kilometres,...
Vercovicium (archaeological site, Scotland, United Kingdom)
At Housesteads, at about the midpoint of Hadrian’s Wall, archaeologists have uncovered a market where northern natives exchanged cattle and hides for Roman products; in this way some Roman wares, and possibly more general cultural influences, found their way north, but the scale of this commerce was probably small. Roman civilization, typified by the towns and villas, or country houses, of....

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