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Tm (chemical element)
(Tm), chemical element, rare-earth metal of the lanthanoid series of the periodic table. One of the rarest of the rare-earth elements, though more abundant than silver, thulium has few commercial uses. Natural thulium is wholly composed of the ...
TM
spiritual movement that was founded by the Indian teacher the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917?–2008)....
Tmesipteris (plant genus)
Psilotophyta (whisk ferns) is a division represented by two living genera (Psilotum and Tmesipteris) and several species that are restricted to the subtropics. This unusual group of small herbaceous plants is characterized by a leafless and rootless body possessing a stem that exhibits a primitive dichotomous type of branching: it forks into equal halves. The......
TMNT (media franchise)
comic-book series about a quartet of humanlike warrior turtles, which grew into an enduring multimedia franchise....
ʿTmol shilshom (work by Agnon)
...Ore’aḥ Nataʿ Lalun (1938; A Guest for the Night), describes the material and moral decay of European Jewry after World War I. His third and perhaps greatest novel, ʿTmol shilshom (1945; “The Day Before Yesterday”), examines the problems facing the westernized Jew who immigrates to Israel. This is neither a realistic story (like some...
TMS (chemical compound)
...The horizontal scale does not show proton resonances in simple wavelength units. Instead, the position of each peak is normally measured relative to the absorption of the protons in the compound tetramethylsilane, (CH3)4Si. Tetramethylsilane is an inert liquid added in small amounts to the compound being analyzed. All 12 of its hydrogen atoms absorb at the same position......
TMV (plant virus)
Plant viruses are transmitted in a number of ways, the most important of which is through insect bites, primarily by aphids and plant hoppers. One of the most well-studied viruses, tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), is spread mechanically by abrasion with infected sap. Symptoms of virus infection include colour changes, dwarfing, and tissue distortion. The appearance of streaks of colour in certain......
TMX Group (Canadian company)
The exchange became a public limited company, London Stock Exchange PLC, in 2001—the year of its bicentennial. In 2011 it was announced that the LSE and the TMX Group, owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange, had agreed to merge....
Tn (chemical isotope)
Radon-220 (thoron; 51.5-second half-life) was first observed in 1899 by the British scientists Robert B. Owens and Ernest Rutherford, who noticed that some of the radioactivity of thorium compounds could be blown away by breezes in the laboratory. Radon-219 (actinon; 3.92-second half-life), which is associated with actinium, was found independently in 1904 by German chemist Friedrich O. Giesel......
TN cell (physics)
A TN cell, as shown in the figure, consists of upper and lower substrate plates separated by a narrow gap (typically 5–10 micrometres; 1 micrometre = 10−6 metre) filled with a layer of liquid crystal. The substrate plates are normally transparent glass and carry patterned electrically conducting transparent coatings of indium tin oxide. The......
TNF (pathology)
a naturally occurring protein that is produced in the human body by the phagocytic cells known as macrophages. (The latter can engulf and destroy bacteria, viruses, and other foreign substances.) TNF is produced by macrophages when they encounter the poisonous substance in bacteria that is known as endotoxin. TNF seems to pe...
“TNG” (American television program)
British actor of stage, screen, and television who was perhaps best known for his work on the series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–94) and its related films....
TNI (Indonesian military)
Following the Suharto presidency, the armed forces returned to one of their pre-Sukarno names, the National Army of Indonesia (Tentara Nasional Indonesia; TNI), and the police were split into a separate unit. The army, constituting more than three-fourths of the forces, has remained the largest segment of the TNI. Men must be at least 18 years old to join the armed forces; selective compulsory......
TNM staging system (tumour classification system)
An internationally standardized classification system is the TNM staging system, put forth by the Union Internationale Contre le Cancer and the American Joint Committee on Cancer. In this system T refers to the size of the primary tumour, N to the presence and extent of lymph node metastases, and M to the presence of distant metastases....
TNP (French national theatre)
French national theatre created in 1920 to bring theatre to the general public. Its first director, Firmin Gémier, had been the director of the Théâtre Antoine and had made a number of attempts to create a people’s theatre. Initially the TNP offered productions from the other national companies in a large hall with inexpensive tickets. It had no acting company, could no...
TNT (American cable network)
...cable television audience, thereby greatly increasing revenues. Turner went on to create two other highly successful and innovative cable television networks: CNN (Cable News Network; 1980) and TNT (Turner Network Television; 1988). He also purchased the Atlanta Braves major league baseball team in 1976 and the Atlanta Hawks professional basketball team in 1977. Turner was a noted yachtsman as....
TNT (chemical compound)
a pale yellow, solid organic nitrogen compound used chiefly as an explosive, prepared by stepwise nitration of toluene. Because TNT melts at 82° C (178° F) and does not explode below 240° C (464° F), it can be melted in steam-heated vessels and poured into casings. It is relatively insensitive to shock and cannot be...
TNX (explosive)
...a hole, about 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) in diameter, the length of the charge in the shell and filling it with trinitrophenylmethylnitramine (tetryl); the second, by using a mixture of 40 percent trinitroxylene (TNX) and 60 percent TNT. This mixture not only casts perfectly but can be detonated with a smaller tetryl booster. There is no indication that any TNX was used in World War II; it is......
Tny (Egypt)
...Upper Egypt. It is situated on the west bank of the Nile River, which encroached considerably on the town in the 18th and 19th centuries. In pharaonic times it was probably the town of This (Tny), ancestral home of the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–c. 2775 bce), which unified Egypt. Its present name derives from the ancient Coptic monastery of Mar Girgis, dedicated to ...
To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train (poem by Cornford)
English poet, perhaps known chiefly, and unfairly, for the sadly comic poem To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train (“O fat white woman whom nobody loves, / Why do you walk through the fields in gloves…”)....
To a Friend Studying German (poem by Leland)
...medleys of Charles G. Leland in his Hans Breitmann’s Ballads (first published under that title in 1884) are examples of the modern macaronic, in particular his warning “To a Friend Studying German”:Vill’st dou learn die Deutsche Sprache?Den set it on your cardDat all de nouns have shenders,Und de.....
To Add One Metre to an Anonymous Mountain (performance art by Zhang Huan)
...for which he covered himself in fish oil and honey and sat motionless for several hours in a public latrine while insects crawled over him. He also initiated several group performances, such as To Add One Metre to an Anonymous Mountain (1995). In this piece Zhang and nine others gathered on a mountain peak, removed their clothes, and laid atop one another until they achieved a height of....
To an Athlete Dying Young (poem by Housman)
...of verse that is lacking the normal first syllable. An iambic line with only one syllable in the first foot is a headless line, as in the third line of the following stanza of A.E. Housman’s poem “To an Athlete Dying Young”:The time you won your town the raceWe chaired you through the market-place;Man and boy stood cheering by,An...
To Autumn (poem by Keats)
...aspect of the natural process. But the rich, slow movement of this and the other odes suggests an enjoyment of such intensity and depth that it makes the moment eternal. To Autumn is essentially the record of such an experience. Autumn is seen not as a time of decay but as a season of complete ripeness and fulfillment, a pause in time when everything has......
“To Axion Esti” (poem by Elytis)
...freedom. During and after the Greek Civil War, he lapsed into literary silence for almost 15 years, returning to print in 1959 with To Axion Esti (“Worthy It Is”; Eng. trans. The Axion Esti), a long poem in which the speaker explores the essence of his being as well as the identity of his country and people. This poem, set to music by Mikis Theodorakis, became......
To Be a Pilgrim (novel by Cary)
fictional character, protagonist and narrator of the novel To Be a Pilgrim (1942), the second novel in a trilogy by Joyce Cary....
To Be or Not to Be (film by Lubitsch [1942])
American screwball comedy film, released in 1942, that was Carole Lombard’s last film. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, it is set in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II. The film’s comedic skewering of Nazis was particularly controversial at a time when the war was ongoing....
To Be the Poet (work by Kingston)
...after Walt Whitman—narrates a peculiarly 20th-century American odyssey; the book combines Eastern and Western literary traditions while emphasizing the Americanness of its characters. In To Be the Poet (2002), written mainly in verse, Kingston presented a rumination on elements of her own past and the acts of reading and creating poetry. The Fifth Book of.....
To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (work by Nemiroff)
In 1969 a selection of her writings, adapted by Robert Nemiroff (to whom Hansberry was married from 1953 to 1964), was produced on Broadway as To Be Young, Gifted, and Black and was published in book form in 1970....
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (poetry by Sexton)
...in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Partisan Review, and other periodicals, and her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, was published in 1960. The book won immediate attention because of the intensely personal and relentlessly honest self-revelatory nature of the poems recording her...
“To Begin Again” (film by Garci [1982])
...in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Partisan Review, and other periodicals, and her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, was published in 1960. The book won immediate attention because of the intensely personal and relentlessly honest self-revelatory nature of the poems recording her...
To Bring You My Love (album by Harvey)
...came out later the same year. Following the tour in support of these releases, Ellis and Vaughan left PJ Harvey, which became the moniker for Harvey as a solo artist. To Bring You My Love (1995) featured an expanded band and more-accessible arrangements. When Harvey toured with this material, she set aside her rugged guitar playing for a more theatrical......
To Catch a Thief (film by Hitchcock [1955])
...But perhaps her most memorable roles were in such Alfred Hitchcock films as Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). Kelly was the perfect Hitchcock heroine, epitomizing what he called “sexual elegance.” After making The Swan (1956) and ......
To Daffodils (work by Herrick)
in literature, the rhyme at the beginning of successive lines of verse. Lines 3 and 4 of Robert Herrick’s “To Daffodils” demonstrate beginning rhyme: As yet the early-rising sunHas not attained his noon....
To Damascus (work by Strindberg)
His new faith, coloured by mysticism, re-created him as a writer. The immediate result was a drama in three parts, To Damascus, in which he depicts himself as “the Stranger,” a wanderer seeking spiritual peace and finding it with another character, “the Lady,” who resembles both Siri and Frida....
“To Demetrianus” (work by Cyprian)
Also, St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in the 3rd century, revealed the currency of Stoic views—e.g., in his Ad Demetrianum (To Demetrius), a denunciation of an enemy to Christianity, in which Cyprian castigates the ill treatment of slaves, who, no less than their masters, are formed of the same matter and endowed with the same soul and live according to the same......
To Demetrius (work by Cyprian)
Also, St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in the 3rd century, revealed the currency of Stoic views—e.g., in his Ad Demetrianum (To Demetrius), a denunciation of an enemy to Christianity, in which Cyprian castigates the ill treatment of slaves, who, no less than their masters, are formed of the same matter and endowed with the same soul and live according to the same......
To Die For (film by Van Sant)
Van Sant’s subsequent venture, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), an adaptation of a Tom Robbins novel, was critically panned. To Die For (1995), however, was widely lauded for its incisive satire of the American fixation on celebrity. In the film, a Machiavellian news anchor played by Nicole Kidman manipulates three teenagers into murderin...
To Each His Own (film by Leisen [1946])
...
To Every Birth Its Blood (novel by Serote)
...(1946), by Peter Abrahams, and Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), by Alan Paton, black Africans go to Johannesburg and experience the terror of apartheid. In To Every Birth Its Blood (1981), Mongane Wally Serote tells the stories of Tsi Molope and Oupa Molope. Tsi looks to his past and wonders, “Where does a river begin to take its journey ...
To God: From the Warring Nations (poetry by Maurice)
Australian poet, best known for his book To God: From the Warring Nations (1917), a powerful indictment of the waste, cruelty, and stupidity of war. He was also the author of lyrics, satirical verses, and essays....
To Have and Have Not (novel by Hemingway)
...of the Lost Generation expatriates. The Spanish Civil War, however, led him to espouse the possibility of collective action to solve social problems, and his less-effective novels, including To Have and Have Not (1937) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), embodied this new belief. He regained some of his form in The Old Man and the Sea (1952) and his......
To Have and Have Not (film by Hawks [1944])
American romantic adventure film, released in 1944, that was loosely based on Ernest Hemingway’s 1937 novel of the same name. The film is perhaps best known for the chemistry between Lauren Bacall, in her film debut, and Humphrey Bogart....
To His Coy Mistress (poem by Marvell)
...the 19th century by Charles Lamb, has since appealed to many readers, and in the 20th century he came to be considered one of the most notable poets of his century. Marvell was eclectic: his “To His Coy Mistress” is a classic of Metaphysical poetry; the Cromwell odes are the work of a classicist; his attitudes are sometimes those of the elegant Cavalier poets; and his nature poems...
To His Sacred Majesty (poem by Dryden)
...to the throne, Dryden joined the poets of the day in welcoming him, publishing in June Astraea Redux, a poem of more than 300 lines in rhymed couplets. For the coronation in 1661, he wrote To His Sacred Majesty. These two poems were designed to dignify and strengthen the monarchy and to invest the young monarch with an aura of majesty, permanence, and even divinity. Thereafter,......
To Huu (Vietnamese poet and politician)
Vietnamese poet and politician (b. 1920, Hue, Vietnam, French Indochina—d. Dec. 9, 2002, Hanoi, Vietnam), was hailed as North Vietnam’s poet laureate and inspired generations of fellow Communist Party members with his popular propagandist...
Toʾ Janggut (Malaysian political leader)
Malay leader of a peasant rebellion in Malaya in 1915, directed against British colonial rule....
To’ Kenali (Malaysian theologian)
Malay theologian and teacher who became the archetype of the rural Malay religious teacher (alim), with a reputation that spread far beyond his native Kelantan to Sumatra, Java, and Cambodia....
To Kill a Mockingbird (film by Mulligan [1962])
American dramatic film, released in 1962, that was adapted from Harper Lee’s coming-of-age novel that addressed racism and injustice. The movie is widely regarded as an American classic....
To Kill a Mockingbird (novel by Lee)
...Maud Montgomery, Sons and Lovers (1913) by D.H. Lawrence, Member of the Wedding (1946) by Carson McCullers, Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) by Jeanette Winterson, and Black Swan Green (2006) by David Mitchell....
To Know Him Is to Love Him (song by Spector)
At age 18 he and two Los Angeles school friends recorded To Know Him Is to Love Him, a simple teenage ballad written by Spector, its title taken from his father’s gravestone. Released under the name of the Teddy Bears, it was one of the biggest hits of 1958. But the group was never to be heard from again, because Spector had other ideas. He moved to New York City an...
To Live (film by Zhang)
...a young woman who seeks justice after a village elder attacks her husband. The rise of communism and its impact on a family were examined in Huozhe (1994; To Live). Huozhe received the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes film festival, but Chinese authorities refused to let Zhang attend the ceremony. He later directed the......
To Live in Pronouns (work by Salinas y Serrano)
...and Todo más claro y otros poemas (1949; “Everything Clearer and Other Poems”). A selection of his love poems in English translation, To Live in Pronouns, was published in 1974. Salinas was also a respected scholar, known for studies on the 15th-century Spanish poet Jorge Manrique, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén......
To Make My Bread (work by Lumpkin)
...capitalist exploitation, as in several novels based on a 1929 strike in the textile mills in Gastonia, N.C., such as Fielding Burke’s Call Home the Heart and Grace Lumpkin’s To Make My Bread (both 1932). Other notable proletarian novels included Jack Conroy’s The Disinherited (1933), Robert Cantwell’s The Land of Plenty...
To Marcia (work by Seneca)
...Questions), where lofty generalities on the investigation of nature are offset by a jejune exposition of the facts. Of the Consolationes, Ad Marciam (To Marcia) consoles a lady on the loss of a son; Ad Helviam matrem (To Mother Helvia), Seneca’s mother on his exile; and Ad Polybium (To......
To Mother Helvia (work by Seneca)
...by a jejune exposition of the facts. Of the Consolationes, Ad Marciam (To Marcia) consoles a lady on the loss of a son; Ad Helviam matrem (To Mother Helvia), Seneca’s mother on his exile; and Ad Polybium (To Polybius), a powerful freedman on the loss of a son but with a sycophantic plea for recall ...
To My Friends (poem by Pushkin)
...supervised by its chief, Count Benckendorf. Moreover, his works of this period met with little comprehension from the critics, and even some of his friends accused him of apostasy, forcing him to justify his political position in the poem “Druzyam” (1828; “To My Friends”). The anguish of his spiritual isolation at this time is reflected in a cycle of poems about the....
To Nhu (Vietnamese poet)
best-loved poet of the Vietnamese and creator of the epic poem Kim van Kieu, written in chu-nom (southern characters). He is considered by some to be the father of Vietnamese literature....
To Paris Never Again (work by Purdy)
...Starting from Ameliasburgh: The Collected Prose of Al Purdy, was published in 1995; most of the pieces are about Canada and Canadian authors. His introspective and melancholic work To Paris Never Again (1997) contains poems about death and lost friends, as well as a short memoir recounting his development and experiences as a poet. Purdy was a two-time recipient (1965 and......
To Philip (oration by Isocrates)
...Sparta to establish concord in Greece by recognizing the fitness and right of Athens to share with Sparta hegemony in Greece and by proceeding with the national crusade against Persia. This amounted to a reassertion of the political faith of the great 5th-century opponent of Persia, Cimon. More than 30 years later, in the letter “To Philip,” Isocrates appealed to the King of......
To Polybius (work by Seneca)
...(To Marcia) consoles a lady on the loss of a son; Ad Helviam matrem (To Mother Helvia), Seneca’s mother on his exile; and Ad Polybium (To Polybius), a powerful freedman on the loss of a son but with a sycophantic plea for recall from Corsica. The De ira (On Anger) deals at length with the passion,....
To Secure These Rights (United States government report)
Later in 1946 Truman convened the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. That group’s landmark report, To Secure These Rights, was published in October 1947. It proposed “to end immediately all discrimination and segregation based on race, color, creed, or national origin, in the organization and activities of all branches of the Armed Services....
To See, to Take (poetry by Van Duyn)
...she coedited until 1967. Her first volume of poetry, Valentines to the Wide World, was published in 1959. She won recognition following the publication of To See, to Take (1970), receiving the Bollingen Prize for achievement in American poetry (1970) and the National Book Award (1971). Her other works include A Time of Bees (1964),....
To Sir, with Love (film by Clavell [1967])
British film drama, released in 1967, that was especially noted for Sidney Poitier’s powerful performance....
To Sleep with Anger (film by Burnett)
...feelings toward the inner city neighbourhood in which it lives. In 1988 Burnett received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which provided him with the financial support to make To Sleep with Anger (1990), another portrait of an African American family coming to grips with both its past and its present. To Sleep with Anger gained widespread......
t’o t’ai bodiless ware (Chinese pottery)
Chinese porcelain characterized by an excessively thin body under the glaze. It often had decoration engraved on it before firing that, like a watermark in paper, was visible only when held to the light; such decoration is called anhua, meaning literally “secret language.”...
To Tell the Truth (American television show)
...Gunsmoke; Bonanza [NBC, 1959–73]; and others), game shows (What’s My Line [CBS, 1950–67]; To Tell the Truth [CBS, 1956–68]; and others), historical dramas (The Untouchables [ABC, 1959–63]; Combat! [ABC,......
Tō Temple (temple, Kyōto, Japan)
In 823 Kūkai was granted imperial permission to take over the leadership of Tō Temple (also known as Kyōōgokoku Temple), at Heian-kyō’s southern entrance. Images developed under his instruction probably included forerunners of the particular ryōkai mandara known as the Tō Temple mandala. Stylistically,...
To the Finland Station (critical and historical study by Wilson)
...Butler Yeats, Paul Valéry, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. During this period, Wilson was married for a time to writer Mary McCarthy. His next major book, To the Finland Station (1940), was a historical study of the thinkers who laid the groundwork for socialism and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Much of these two books originally appeared in......
To the Friends of God (work by Marcarius the Egyptian)
The only literary work ascribed to Macarius is a letter, To the Friends of God, addressed to younger monks. His spiritual doctrine is not the cultivated speculative thought circulated by the eminent 3rd-century theologian Origen of Alexandria, but, as with the doctrine of the monk Anthony, it is a learning derived from primitive monasticism’s “book of nature.” The essen...
To the Islands (novel by Stow)
...(1940). Her novels explored the relation between personality and environment and particularly the theme of exploitation. A younger writer, Randolph Stow, had an early success with To the Islands (1958), a novel that was poetic in texture and structure and that intertwined aspects of European and Aboriginal culture and belief....
To the Lighthouse (novel by Woolf)
fictional character, a painter and one of the central characters in the novel To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf. Lily represents Woolf’s ideal artist, who mingles “masculine” rationality with “feminine” sympathy. At the beginning of the book, Lily is one of the guests at the Ramsay family’s summer cottage in the Hebrides. She is an unmarrie...
To the Muses (poem by Blake)
...from oblivion.” Some are merely boyish rodomontade, but some, such as To Winter and Mad Song, are exquisite. To the Muses, lamenting the death of music, concludes,...
To the Thin and Elegant Woman Who Resides Inside of Alix Nelson (poem by Wakoski)
In contemporary poetry, the genre has for decades remained a productive one. Just two examples, from the 1970s, are To the Thin and Elegant Woman Who Resides Inside of Alix Nelson (1976), Diane Wakoski’s provocative imagining of renewed sexual plenitude in a New World America, and Derek Walcott’s satirical poem New World (1976), w...
“To Whom She Will” (work by Jhabvala)
Jhabvala’s first two novels, To Whom She Will (1955; also published as Amrita) and The Nature of Passion (1956), won much critical acclaim for their comic depiction of Indian society and manners. She was often compared to Jane Austen for her microscopic studies of a tightly conventional world. Her position as both insider and detached observer allowed her a unique,......
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (film)
...including Blue in the Face, The Brady Bunch Movie, and two drag-themed films, Wigstock: The Movie and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, a comedy that starred John Leguizamo, Wesley Snipes, and Patrick Swayze. RuPaul also had success on the dance and video charts with a......
to-be-is-to-be-perceived doctrine (philosophy)
...his original line of argument for immaterialism, based on the subjectivity of colour, taste, and the other sensible qualities, was replaced by a simple, profound analysis of the meaning of “to be” or “to exist.” “To be,” said of the object, means to be perceived; “to be,” said of the subject, means to perceive....
To-lo-ma (Indonesian kingdom)
the oldest recorded kingdom in western Java. It was established about the 5th century ad, but little is recorded about the kingdom except for a sketchy account by a Chinese traveler and several rock inscriptions discovered near Bogor and in extreme western Java. These sources agree that the most powerful king of Tarumanegara was Purnavarman, who conquered neighbouring countries and b...
To-lun (China)
town, southeast-central Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, northern China. It is situated close to the border of Hebei province. Until 1950 the town was in the former Chahar province....
To-wang (Mongolian prince)
Mongolian prince who opposed Manchu rule and supported Mongolia’s independence from China. Concerned with education, he set up a primary school open to commoners, had Buddhist scriptures translated into Mongol, and codified practical advice for herdspeople in a book he circulated among them. To diversify the economy, ...
To-wen (Buddhist and Hindu mythology)
in Hindu mythology, the king of the yakṣas (nature spirits) and the god of wealth. He is associated with the earth, mountains, all treasures such as minerals and jewels that lie underground, and riches in general. According to most accounts he first lived in Laṅkā (...
toad (amphibian)
any squat, rough-skinned, tailless amphibian of the order Anura, and especially a member of the family Bufonidae. The true toads (Bufo), with more than 300 species, are found worldwide except in Australia, Madagascar, polar regions, and Polynesia, though ...
toad bug (insect)
any of some 100 species of insects in the true bug order, Heteroptera, that resemble tiny frogs. They have short, broad bodies and protruding eyes and capture their prey by leaping upon it. Adults in this family are wingless....
toad lily (plant)
In many species the flower has a checkered appearance. The fruit is a three-valved capsule with many seeds. Snake’s head, or toad lily (F. meleagris), a species with poisonous bulbs, and crown imperial (F. imperialis), a strong-smelling plant, are commonly cultivated as garden flowers....
toadfish (fish)
any of about 80 species of bottom-living fishes constituting the family Batrachoididae and the order Batrachoidiformes. They are found chiefly in the New World and mostly in warm seas—occasionally in freshwater. Toadfishes are heavy-bodied fishes with broad, flattened heads and large mouths equipped with strong teeth. They grow to a maximum of about 40 cm (16 inches) and either are scaleles...
toadflax (plant)
any member of a genus (Linaria) of nearly 150 herbaceous plants native to the North Temperate Zone, particularly the Mediterranean region. The common name refers to their flaxlike leaves; the flowers are two-lipped and spurred like snapdragons. Among the prominent members are ...
toadstool
any of various inedible or poisonous species of mushrooms (kingdom Fungi). See mushroom....
toadstool poisoning
toxic, sometimes fatal, effect of eating poisonous mushrooms (toadstools). There are some 70 to 80 species of mushrooms that are poisonous to humans; many of them contain toxic alkaloids (muscarine, agaricine, phalline)....
Toala (people)
Seven major ethnic groups inhabit Celebes: the Toala, Toraja, Buginese, Makassarese, Minahasan, Mori, and Gorontalese. The Toala, who live throughout the island, are nomadic, shy jungle dwellers with their own language. The Toraja, inhabiting central, southeastern, and eastern Celebes, are of Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) ancestry; they have their own language and are primarily......
Toamasina (Madagascar)
town, eastern Madagascar. The town lies along the Indian Ocean. It was rebuilt after destruction by hurricane in 1927, with the modern sector centring on the tree-lined avenue Poincaré. Toamasina is Madagascar’s commercial hub and foremost port, handling much of the island’s ...
Toarcian Stage (geology)
uppermost of the four divisions of the Lower Jurassic Series, representing all rocks formed worldwide during the Toarcian Age, which occurred between 183 million and 175.6 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. The Toarcian Stage overlies the Lower Jurassic Pliensbachian Stage and...
“Toast of the Town” (American television program)
...1960s exhibited more genre diversity than would be seen again until the cable era. Variety shows (The Red Skelton Show [NBC/CBS/NBC, 1951–71]; The Ed Sullivan Show [CBS, 1948–71]; and others), westerns (Gunsmoke; Bonanza [NBC, 1959–73]; and others), game shows (.....
toaster (kitchen appliance)
...1960s exhibited more genre diversity than would be seen again until the cable era. Variety shows (The Red Skelton Show [NBC/CBS/NBC, 1951–71]; The Ed Sullivan Show [CBS, 1948–71]; and others), westerns (Gunsmoke; Bonanza [NBC, 1959–73]; and others), game shows (.....
toastmaster’s glass (glassware)
English glass about the size of an ordinary drinking glass but with only about one-quarter of its capacity; the glass creates the illusion of being full by means of a depression in its bowl, which in fact is almost solid. It owed its origin to the clubs of 18th-century England, where the toastmaster had to remain sober enough to carry out his......
Toba (Japan)
national park on the Shima Peninsula, central Honshu, Japan. Its two main cities are Ise, famous for its Shintō shrines, and Toba, a seaport that guards the southern entrance to Ise Bay (Ise-wan). The bay has many islands and is renowned for its Mikimoto cultured-pearl industry. Pearl Island in Toba Harbour is the site where Mikimoto Kōkichi first succeeded in producing a cultured......
Toba (emperor of Japan)
Go-Sanjō died shortly after abdicating, but he was followed by three successive rulers—Shirakawa, Toba, and Go-Shirakawa—who exercised sovereign power both as emperors and then even more effectively as retired emperors. Governmental control in Japan thus passed from Fujiwara regents to the “cloistered emperors” who wielded real power behind the scenes during the....
Toba (South American people)
...they practiced and became predatory nomads raiding Spanish settlements, taking cattle, and capturing slaves from more sedentary tribes. Other Chaco tribes, such as the Abipón, Mocoví, Toba, and Lengua, also became horsemen and raiders. These tribes continued to move their camps in search of pasture for their herds of horses and cattle. Incipient class differences based on war......
Toba, Abbot of (Japanese artist and priest)
47th head priest of the Enryaku-ji, which is headquarters of the Tendai sect of Buddhism, near Kyōto in modern Shiga Prefecture....
Toba Batak language
...Malay /r/ to Tagalog /g/ and Ngaju Dayak /h/, as in Malay urat, which corresponds to Tagalog ugat and Ngaju Dayak uhat ‘vein.’ In addition, van der Tuuk’s grammar of the Toba Batak language of northern Sumatra, published in two volumes between 1864 and 1867, stands as one of the earliest attempts to represent a non-Western language in terms of inductive...
Toba, Danau (lake, Indonesia)
lake in the Barisan Mountains, north-central Sumatra, Indonesia. It covers an area of about 440 square miles (1,140 square km), excluding Samosir Island, which occupies a large part of the lake’s centre and which is about 30 miles (50 km) long and 10 miles (15 km) wide. The lake drains east through the Asahan River into the Strait of Malacca; along the Asahan River several major hydroelectr...