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twinship (religion)
African mythology commonly depicts the cosmos anthropomorphically. The human body is a microcosm that incorporates the same primordial elements and essential forces that make up the universe. Twinship is a predominant theme in much West African myth and ritual, because the human body is conceived as the twin of the cosmic body. According to the cosmogony shared by the Dogon, Bambara, and......
twintail (insect)
...divided into three families. Typically the members of the family Campodeidae have two long, slender abdominal cerci (sensory appendages) that are sensitive to vibrations. They are commonly known as twintails. The cerci of the family Japygidae are modified into hard pincers that are used to catch prey. Members of the third family, the Projapygidae, also have cerci....
twirler moth (insect)
any of more than 4,500 species of moths (order Lepidoptera), some of which are important pests. The brown adults have gray or silver markings and average 19 mm (34 inch) in wingspan. The hindwings have somewhat concave outer margins and pointed tips, in contrast with the more typical, narrow forewings....
twist (dance)
vigorous dance that developed in the early 1960s in the United States and became internationally popular after its adoption in fashionable circles. The twist’s characteristic hip, arm, and leg movements have been described as “drying the buttocks with an imaginary towel while grinding out an imaginary cigarett...
Twist and Shout (song by Medley and Russell)
...native Cincinnati, Kelly, Rudolph, and Ronald Isley gained pop recognition in 1959 with their composition “Shout.” In 1962 the trio’s rollicking cover version of the Top Notes’ “Twist and Shout” remained on Billboard’s pop chart for 11 weeks. The Isleys began their own record company, T-Neck Records, in 1964, shortly thereafter recruiting ...
twist conformation (chemistry)
Many of the most important principles of conformational analysis have been developed by examining cyclohexane. Three conformations of cyclohexane, designated as chair, boat, and skew (or twist), are essentially free of angle strain. Of these three the chair is the most stable, mainly because it has a staggered arrangement of all its bonds. The boat and skew conformations lack perfect staggering......
twist drill (tool)
...determines how large a chip is taken off with each rotation of the drill. The degree of twist of the helical flutes also affects the drill’s cutting and chip-removal properties. For general-purpose twist drills the helix angle is about 32°. The angle formed by the two sides of the tapering point is 118° for standard drills, while for drilling tough metals, a flatter point w...
Twist, Kid (American gangster)
American killer and gangster who became a celebrated police informer in 1940–41....
twist lift (ice skating)
...moves across the ice. The star lift requires the man to raise his partner into the air by her hip while she forms a five-point “star” position with her extended legs, arms, and head. The twist lift requires both partners to skate backward as the man lifts his partner over his head and tosses her into the air. The airborne woman completes up to three rotations before being caught a...
Twist, Oliver (fictional character)
fictional character, a young orphan who is the hero of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1837–39), a novel that illustrates how poverty nurtures crime....
Twist, The (song by Ballard)
...best remembered for songs that were frequently as scandalous as they were inventive, most notably the salacious Work with Me, Annie (1954). He also wrote The Twist (1959), which sparked a dance craze in the United States....
twisted moss (plant)
any member of the moss genus Tortula (subclass Bryidae), which form yellow-green or reddish brown cushions on walls, soil, rocks, trees, and sand dunes in the Northern Hemisphere. About 25 of the 144 species are native to North America; the best-known species in both North America and Great Britain are T. muralis...
twisted sun orchid (plant)
A sun orchid derives its name from its habit of remaining closed except in strong sunlight. Some self-pollinating species never open their flowers. The lemon orchid (T. antennifera), the twisted sun orchid (T. flexuosa), the custard orchid (T. violosa), and the scented sun orchid (T. avistata) are common Australian species....
twisted whitlow grass (plant)
...many varieties and is naturalized in northern North America, where it grows on mountains, sandy ground, and rock walls. Yellow whitlow grass (D. aizoides) is similar but with yellow flowers; twisted, or hoary, whitlow grass (D. incana) and the smaller D. norvegica have leaves on the stems and white flowers with notched petals. All bloom in the spring....
twisted-nematic 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......
Twister (film by Bont)
...(1992), and Bob Roberts (1992). Though Hunt earned praise for her performances, the films failed to ignite at the box office. That changed in 1996 with Twister. The special-effects-driven movie about tornado chasers was a blockbuster, grossing more than $200 million. As offers for other big-screen ventures poured in, Hunt chose the unlikely......
twisting (textile process)
in yarn and rope production, process that binds fibres or yarns together in a continuous strand, accomplished in spinning or playing operations. The direction of the twist may be to the right, described as Z twist, or to the left, described as S twist....
twisting dive (sport)
...board. In the fourth group, the inward dives, the diver stands on the edge of the platform and springs backward but rotates forward, again toward the board. The fifth classification is that of the twisting dives, in which the diver rotates the body on its long axis while performing one of the other four types of dives—as in a forward 112 somersault with...
twitch (physiology)
...tension increases for about 200 milliseconds and then begins to decrease, at first rather rapidly and then more slowly. More happens during this mechanical response to a single stimulation, called a twitch, than the tension record suggests....
Twitchell, Paul (American religious leader)
a Westernized version of the Punjabi Sant Mat or Radha Soami Satsang spiritual tradition. ECKANKAR was founded in 1965 by Paul Twitchell (c. 1908–71)....
Twitchell, Ralph E. (American historian)
The original state flag of New Mexico, designed by the historian Ralph E. Twitchell and adopted in 1915, was typical of American vexillography (flag design). On a blue background it included the name of the state, its order of admission to the Union (47), the state seal, and a U.S. flag....
Twitchett, Denis Crispin (British historian)
British historian (b. Sept. 23, 1925, London, Eng.—d. Feb. 24, 2006, Cambridge, Eng.), was one of the world’s foremost scholars of early Chinese history, most notably the T’ang dynasty (ad 618–907), and principal editor of the comprehensive 15-volume Cambridge History of China. Twitchett learned Japanese during his World War II military service, and...
Twitter (microblogging service)
online microblogging service for distributing short messages among groups of recipients via personal computer or mobile telephone. Twitter incorporates aspects of social networking Web sites, such as Myspace and Facebook, with instant messaging...
Twitter Takes on the World: 140 Characters at a Time (Twitter)
The question “Do you Twitter?” was asked throughout 2009 by users of the Web’s most popular microblogging service. Whereas a traditional Web log, or blog, might be updated with long entries once or twice a day, a Twitter user might post dozens of short messages of up to 140 characters—called “tweets”—in the same period. In addition to this aspect of...
Twitty, Conway (American singer)
(HAROLD LLOYD JENKINS), U.S. singer (b. Sept. 1, 1933, Friars Point, Miss.--d. June 5, 1993, Springfield, Mo.), was a successful songwriter and rockabilly star who struck gold with the 1958 pop recording "It’s Only Make Believe" and, when his star began to wane in the early 1960s, reinvented his image and used his rich, tremulous baritone to specialize in country ballads. Twitty, backed up ...
two (number)
The number 2 symbolizes many of the basic dualities: me/you, male/female, yes/no, alive/dead, left/right, yin/yang, and so on. Dualities are common in human approaches to the world, probably because of our preference for two-valued logic—yet another duality, true/false. Although 2 was female to the Pythagoreans, other numerological schemes viewed it as male. In Agrippa von Nettesheim...
Two African Tales (work by Nicol)
Nicol’s short stories were published in Two African Tales (1965) and The Truly Married Woman, and Other Stories (1965), under the name Abioseh Nicol. They centre upon life in the government service and upon the interaction of Africans with colonial administrators in preindependent Sierra Leone. His short stories and poems appeared in anthologies and journals. He also wrote......
Two Arabian Knights (film Milestone [1928])
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Two Books (work by Peresvetov)
In 1549 he presented his Two Books (Dve Knigi) to Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. These works were ostensibly an account of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II but actually provided a covert, allegorical denunciation of the privileges still enjoyed by the boyars. Peresvetov’s support of the demands of the military class over that of the boyars presumably foun...
Two Books of the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (work by Pufendorf)
...Sweden and Denmark, he was imprisoned along with the rest of the ambassador’s retinue. During eight months of confinement, he occupied himself by elaborating his first work on natural law, Two Books of the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (1660), in which he further developed the ideas of Grotius and Hobbes. The elector palatine Karl Ludwig, to whom the work was dedicated...
Two Brothers (sarcophagus)
...vulgar and a little crude around 300, but it became progressively refined in the time of Constantine and his sons. To the years from 340 to 370 belong the best Roman works: the sarcophagi called the “Two Brothers” (Museo Cristiano), that of Junius Bassus, dated 359, another with columns (both in the grotto of St. Peter’s, Rome), that of the “Three Good Shepherds...
Two Brothers (work by Pratolini)
His first important novel, Il quartiere (1944; The Naked Streets), offers a vivid, exciting portrait of a gang of Florentine adolescents. Cronaca familiare (1947; Two Brothers) is a tender story of Pratolini’s dead brother. Cronache di poveri amanti (1947; A Tale of Poor Lovers), which has been called one of the finest works of Italian Neorealism,.....
Two Brothers, War of the (Portuguese history)
John VI acknowledged the independence of Brazil in 1825, assuming pro forma the imperial title and then yielding it to Pedro. However, when John died (March 10, 1826), no provision had been made for the succession except that his daughter Maria Isabel was named regent. Pedro, as Peter IV of Portugal, issued from Brazil a charter providing for a parliamentary regime by the authorization of the......
Two Callas (photograph by Cunningham)
...Coast photographers known as Group f.64. Like other members of the group, she rejected the soft-focused sentimental subjects that were then popular in favour of images such as Two Callas (c. 1929), which conveys a sensuous delight in nature....
“Two Cantos of Mutabilitie: Which, both for Forme and Matter, appeare to be parcell of some following Booke of the Faerie Queene, under the legend of Constancie” (poems by Spenser)
two poems and two stanzas of a third by Edmund Spenser. They are generally considered to constitute a fragmentary Book VII of The Faerie Queene. They were first published with the folio edition of The Faerie Queene in 1609....
Two Cities (religious concept)
...was not a future event but one that already had been set in motion by Christ. To explain the continued existence of war, hatred, injustice, and poverty, Augustine used the notion of the “Two Cities.” There was a “heavenly city,” the celestial Jerusalem where the millennium was already manifest, and an “earthly city,” the terrestrial Babylon where the......
Two Cities, The (work by Otto of Freising)
Otto’s Chronica sive historia de duabus civitatibus is a history of the world from the beginning to 1146. Following St. Augustine, it interprets all secular history as a conflict between the civitas Dei (“the realm of God”) and the world; and it views its contemporary period as that in which Antichrist (the principal personage of power opposed to Christ) is to ap...
Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, The (work by Snow)
As both a literary man and a scientist, Snow was particularly well equipped to write a book about science and literature; The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959) and its sequel, Second Look (1964), constitute Snow’s most widely known—and widely attacked—position. He argued that practitioners of either of the two disciplines know little, if anything,...
Two Daughters (film by Ray)
...Among such works, Charulata (1964; The Lonely Wife), a tragic love triangle set within a wealthy, Western-influenced Bengali family in 1879, is perhaps Ray’s most accomplished film. Teen Kanya (1961; “Three Daughters,” English-language title Two Daughters) is a varied trilogy of short films about women, while Ghare Baire (1984; The Home...
Two Days, The (work by Cherubini)
...Beethoven (who regarded Cherubini as his greatest contemporary) studied the score of a Cherubini opera with a similar “rescue” theme: Les Deux Journées (1800; The Two Days, also known as The Water Carrier from its German title, Der Wasserträger). This opera is considered by many to be Cherubini’s masterpiece....
two Dionysii, affair of the (Roman Catholic history)
...Trinity as three distinct deities—against Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, the pope convened a Roman synod (260) and demanded an explanation from Bishop Dionysius; this became known as “the affair of the two Dionysii.” Semantics was at the root of the difficulty; Greek and Roman understandings of the same terms differed. The discussions at the synod helped to prepare the way...
Two Dogmas of Empiricism (work by Quine)
...the most influential member of a new generation of philosophers who, though still scientific in their worldview, were dissatisfied with logical positivism. In his seminal paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951), Quine rejected, as what he considered the first dogma, the idea that there is a sharp division between logic and empirical science. He argued, in a vein......
Two Emperors’ Manifesto (European history)
...Piłsudski, from 1914, to organize his volunteer Polish legions to serve with Austrian forces against the Russians. Austria’s benevolence, however, was not reflected by Germany; and when the Two Emperors’ Manifesto of Nov. 5, 1916, provided for the constitution of an independent Polish kingdom, it was clear that this kingdom would consist only of Polish territory conquered f...
Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, 1828–31 (book by Sturt)
...peaceably with many Aborigines along the way. Exhausted and nearly blinded because of poor diet and overexertion on his trip, he spent 1832–34 recuperating in England, where he wrote Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, 1828–31 (1833). The book led to the choice of South Australia as the site for a new British settlement....
Two for the Road (film by Donen [1967])
American dramatic film, released in 1967, that employed an innovative disjointed timeline to reveal the history of a marriage. It pivoted on the considerable onscreen chemistry between leads Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney....
Two Gentlemen of Verona (work by Guare)
In 1971 Guare earned critical acclaim for The House of Blue Leaves (filmed for television, 1987), a farce about a zookeeper who murders his insane wife after he fails as a songwriter. Two Gentlemen of Verona (1972; with Mel Shapiro), a rock-musical modernization of William Shakespeare’s comedy, won the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle awards for best musical of......
Two Gentlemen of Verona, The (work by Shakespeare)
an early play in five acts by William Shakespeare, written perhaps in 1590–94 and published in the First Folio of 1623 from an authorial manuscript. It is a pastoral story about two young friends who travel to Milan, where they are educated in courtly behaviour....
Two Georges, The (novel by Dreyfuss and Turtledove)
In collaboration with Hugo Award-winning author Harry Turtledove, Dreyfuss released a critically praised novel, The Two Georges (1996), a humorous look at what American life might be like had the United States not won the Revolutionary War....
Two Girls, Fat and Thin (novel by Gaitskill)
...Range: Wyoming Stories (1999) and Andrea Barrett in Ship Fever (1996). Others focused on relationships between women, including Mary Gaitskill in her witty satiric novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991), written under the influences of Nabokov and Mary McCarthy. Lorrie Moore published rich, idiosyncratic stories as densely textured as novels. Deborah Eisenbe...
Two Landowners (work by Turgenev)
...fame. Many of the sketches portrayed various types of landowners or episodes, drawn from his experience, of the life of the manorial, serf-owning Russian gentry. Of these, the most important are “Two Landowners,” a study of two types of despotic serf-owners, and “Hamlet of Shchigrovsky Province,” which contains one of the most profound and poignant analyses of the......
Two Little Misogynists (work by Spitteler)
...cycles of lyrics, Schmetterlinge (1889; “Butterflies”) and Gras- und Glockenlieder (1906; “Grass and Bell Songs”). He also wrote two masterly stories—Die Mädchenfeinde (1907; Two Little Misogynists, 1922), a childhood idyll derived from his own experience; and Conrad der Leutnant (1898), a dramatically finished......
Two Lovers (painting by Reza ʿAbbasi)
...ʿAbbāsī preferred naturalistic subjects and portraiture to the illustrative themes that had dominated Persian miniature painting for 200 years. His painting Two Lovers (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) is among the most accomplished works of the Eṣfahān school. Although there is an element of stylization, the exquisiteness...
Two Micron All Sky Survey (astronomical survey)
astronomical survey conducted from 1997 to 2001 of the entire sky at near-infrared wavelengths. Two automated 1.3-metre (4.3-foot) telescopes were used. One was at Mount Hopkins, Arizona; the other was at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The observed wavelengths were 1.25, 1.65, and 2.17 microns (1 micron is 10...
Two Mules for Sister Sara (film by Siegel)
...were released in the United States, Eastwood was offered starring roles in Hollywood pictures. He worked with director Don Siegel on Coogan’s Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971), and Escape from Alcatraz (1979). Their best-known collaboration was ......
“Two New Sciences” (work by Galileo)
...was spirited out of Italy and published in Leiden, Netherlands, in 1638 under the title Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla meccanica (Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences). Galileo here treated for the first time the bending and breaking of beams and summarized his mathematical and experimental investigations of motion,......
Two Noble Kinsmen, The (play by Shakespeare and Fletcher)
tragicomedy in five acts by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. The play was probably written and first performed about 1612–14. It was published in quarto in 1634 with a title page identifying Fletcher and Shakespeare as joint authors. It was included in the second folio of works by Fletcher and...
Two Nudes (work by Picasso)
...earth itself (The Harem, 1906). Picasso seems to have been working with colour in an attempt to come closer to sculptural form, especially in 1906 (Two Nudes; La Toilette). His Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906) and a Self-Portrait with Palette (1906) show.....
Two Offers, The (work by Harper)
...poetry was noted for its simple rhythm and biblical imagery. Its narrative voice reflected the storytelling style of the oral tradition. She also contributed to various periodicals; her story “The Two Offers” in the Anglo-African Magazine in September–October 1859 was said to be the first published by an African American author....
Two Paths, The (work by Ruskin)
...required a ferocity and oddness that would be conspicuous features of Ruskin’s later career. In 1858 Ruskin lectured on “The Work of Iron in Nature, Art and Policy” (published in The Two Paths, 1859), a text in which both the radical-conservative temper and the symbolic method of his later cultural criticism are clearly established. Beginning as an art critic, ...
Two People (work by Dreyer)
...and religious persecution, set in 17th-century Denmark, that won international recognition and substantially contributed to the revival of the Danish cinema; Tvä människor (1945; Two People); and Ordet (1955; The Word), winner of the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival, dramatizes the complex relationship between social good and spiritual good in an...
Two Plays and a Preface (work by Dennis)
...The Making of Moo, a satirical play on the psychological power of religious fervor, was performed in 1957 and was published, together with the stage version of Cards of Identity, as Two Plays and a Preface (1958). His knowledge of journalism sharpened the satire of August for the People (1961), a much-praised play about the power of the press. His nonfiction included...
Two Preludes Through all Major Keys (work by Beethoven)
...the key signature remains unchanged with three flats, and all the new notes of the subsequent keys are indicated with accidental signs. In contrary fashion, Beethoven’s Two Preludes Through all Major Keys for piano or organ, op. 39 (1789), have several passages where the key signature changes in nearly every measure....
two red years (Italian history)
Throughout the biennio rosso (“two red years”; 1919–20), revolution appeared imminent. While spontaneous land occupations swept through the south, riots and lootings hit shopkeepers in the north and centre in the summer of 1919, and prices were cut by half throughout the country. Socialist deputies walked out of parliament in December 1919...
Two Serious Ladies (novel by Bowles)
...by French governesses. She married the composer-author Paul Bowles in 1938. They lived in Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and the United States, where she began writing her only published novel, Two Serious Ladies (1943). For a time the couple lived in a boardinghouse with, among others, the writers Richard Wright and Carson McCullers, the composer Benjamin Britten, and the entertainer......
Two Sicilies, Kingdom of the (historical kingdom, Italy)
the state that united the southern part of the Italian peninsula with the island of Sicily between the mid-15th and the mid-19th centuries. (For a brief history of the state, see Naples, Kingdom of.) United by the Normans in the 11th century, the two areas were divided in 1282 between the Angevin...
Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race (book by Leonov and Scott)
...spaceflight. He retired as a cosmonaut in 1982, and from 1982 to 1991 he worked at the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, near Moscow. In 2004 he wrote a book, Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race, with American astronaut David Scott....
Two Solitudes (novel by MacLennan)
...by Ernest Buckler, set in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis valley. These novels strain the bonds of conventional narrative structures as they shift from social realism toward lyricism. In the panoramic Two Solitudes (1945) and The Watch That Ends the Night (1959), framed against the backdrop of the two world wars, Hugh MacLennan attempted to capture moral, social, and re...
Two Sources of Morality and Religion, The (work by Bergson)
After L’Évolution créatrice, 25 years elapsed before he published another major work. In 1932 he published Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion (The Two Sources of Morality and Religion). As in the earlier works, he claimed that the polar opposition of the static and the dynamic provides the basic insight. Thus, in the moral, social, and religio...
Two Stories (work by Virginia and Leonard Woolf)
...founded the Hogarth Press, named for Hogarth House, their home in the London suburbs. The Woolfs themselves (she was the compositor while he worked the press) published their own Two Stories in the summer of 1917. It consisted of Leonard’s Three Jews and Virginia’s The Mark on the Wall, the latter about c...
Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (work by Lenin)
...the Mensheviks. After the failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905, he drew positive lessons for the future in Dve taktiki Sotsial-Demokraty v demokraticheskoy revolyutsi (1905; Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. He fiercely attacked the influence of Kantian philosophy on German and Russian Marxism in Materializm i......
Two Thousand Guineas (horse race)
one of the English Classic horse races (with the Derby, the Saint Leger, the One Thousand Guineas, and the Oaks), first run in 1809. Run at Newmarket, Suffolk, the 1-mile event is open to three-year-old colts (carrying 126 pounds) and fillies (121 pounds)....
Two Thousand Seasons (work by Armah)
...Western-inspired materialism and moral decay that he sees around him. The theme of return and disillusionment continued in Why Are We So Blest? (1971), but with a somewhat wider scope. In Two Thousand Seasons (1973) Armah borrowed language from the African dirge and praise song to produce a chronicle of the African past, which is portrayed as having a certain romantic perfection.....
Two Thousand Words (Czech political document)
In June 1968 Čáslavská signed the Two Thousand Words, a document that called for more rapid progress toward real democracy in Czechoslovakia. After Soviet tanks entered Prague in August of that year, Čáslavská, facing possible arrest for her political stance, fled to the mountain village of Šumperk. She was granted......
Two Towers, The (work by Tolkien)
...by critics, it was not written specifically for children, nor is it a trilogy, though it is often published in three parts: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. It was divided originally because of its bulk and to reduce the risk to its publisher should it fail to sell. In fact it......
Two Tracts on Government (work by Locke)
In his first substantial political work, Two Tracts on Government (composed in 1660 but not published until 1967), Locke defended a very conservative position: in the interest of political stability, a government is justified in legislating on any matter of religion that is not directly relevant to the essential beliefs of Christianity. This view, a response to the......
Two Trains Running (play by Wilson)
...Pittsburgh; The Piano Lesson (produced 1987), in which competing ideas about their legacy threatens to rupture an African American family in the 1930s; and Two Trains Running (produced 1990), a look at the Black Power ideals of the 1960s from the perspective of the late 1980s. Fences and The Piano......
Two Treatises of Government (work by Locke)
...beliefs of Christianity. This view, a response to the perceived threat of anarchy posed by sectarian differences, was diametrically opposed to the doctrine that he would later expound in Two Treatises of Government (1690)....
Two Trinities, The (painting by Murillo)
...France by Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult during the Napoleonic period. Murillo’s late style is exemplified by his unfinished works for the Capuchin church at Cádiz and the Two Trinities (popularly known as the “Holy Family”). The often mystical significance of his subjects is countered by the idealized reality of his figures based on familiar...
Two Ways of Life, The (work by Rejlander)
...effects by combining several negatives to make one print, with a resulting image that moved beyond the results achieved by straightforward photography. His most famous work, The Two Ways of Life (1857), was based on the background and arrangement of Raphael’s School of Athens (1509–11) and was created by combining more than 30...
Two Women (film by De Sica [1960])
Italian film drama, released in 1961, that earned Sophia Loren an Academy Award for best actress—the first Oscar ever given for a performance in a foreign-language movie....
Two Women (novel by Mulisch)
...(1959; The Stone Bridal Bed), in which an American pilot involved in the bombing of Dresden returns to the city years later, won him an international audience. Twee vrouwen (1975; Two Women; filmed 1979) explored love between two women. Perhaps his most popular work is his novel De aanslag (1982; The Assault; filmed 1985), in which one family betrays another.....
Two Women (novel by Moravia)
...of Rome); La disubbidienza (1948; Disobedience); and Il conformista (1951; The Conformist), all on themes of isolation and alienation. La ciociara (1957; Two Women) tells of an adaptation to post-World War II Italian life. La noia (1960; The Empty Canvas) is the story of a painter unable to find meaning either in love or work. Many....
Two Years Before the Mast (work by Dana)
In 1840, the year of his admission to the bar, he published Two Years Before the Mast, a personal narrative presenting “the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is” and showing the abuses endured by his fellow sailors. The book was immediately popular, and its realistic descriptions made it an American classic. In 1841 he published The Seaman’s Friend (als...
two-banded monitor (lizard)
In 1840, the year of his admission to the bar, he published Two Years Before the Mast, a personal narrative presenting “the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is” and showing the abuses endured by his fellow sailors. The book was immediately popular, and its realistic descriptions made it an American classic. In 1841 he published The Seaman’s Friend (als...
two-barred crossbill (bird)
The spruce-loving white-winged crossbill (L. leucoptera) occurs throughout the colder regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It wanders widely, but when it finds a good crop of cones, it may nest there, even in midwinter. An isolated variety of the species lives in the pine forests of Hispaniola. It utters a dry, rattling, mechanical trill in flight....
two-bin system (business)
Inventory control is concerned with two questions: when to replenish the store and by how much. There are two main control systems. The two-bin system (sometimes called the min-max system) involves the use of two bins, either physically or on paper. The first bin is intended for supplying current demand and the second for satisfying demand during the replenishment period. When the stock in the......
two-bloc system (French government)
...for the second round withdraw their candidacy and endorse one of the leading candidates. In contrast to the two-party norm of the plurality system, France has what some analysts have called a “two-bloc” system, in which the main parties of the left and the main parties of the right compete against each other in the first round of an election to be the representative of their......
two-body problem (physics)
...trajectory that was an ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola, depended on the assumption that there were only two point particles interacting by the inverse square force. Hence, this “gravitational two-body problem” has an exact solution that reproduces Kepler’s laws. If one or more additional bodies also interact with the original pair through their mutual gravitational interact...
two-cardinal problem (logic and mathematics)
In another direction, there are “two-cardinal” problems that arise from the possibilities of changing, from one model to another, not only the cardinality of the domain of the first model but also the cardinality of some chosen property (such as being a prime number). Various answers to these questions have been found, including proofs of independence (based on the ordinary axioms......
two-cavity klystron (electronics)
...field. The velocities of electrons emitted from the cathode are modulated to produce a density-modulated electron beam. The principle of operation involved here can be explained in terms of a two-cavity klystron amplifier....
two-centre potential (physics)
A two-centre potential may also be used to represent the nature of the forces at work in a fissioning nucleus. In such a model, the potential energy surfaces are represented by two overlapping spheres or spheroids. It is equivalent to a one-centre potential when there is a complete overlap at small deformations, and it has the correct asymptotic behaviour as the nascent fragments separate. This......
two-clawed hunting spider (arachnid)
any member of a relatively common, widespread family of spiders (order Araneida) that range in body length from 3 to 15 mm (about 0.12 to 0.6 inch) and build silken tubes under stones, in leaves, or in grass. Chiracanthium inclusum, found throughout the United States, is venomous to humans and is often found indoors. ...
two-compartment standard (nautical science)
...(e.g., passenger ships) are built to the “one-compartment” standard, meaning that at least one compartment bounded by watertight bulkheads must be floodable without sinking the ship. A two-compartment standard is common for larger passenger-carrying ships—a measure that presumably protects the ship against a collision at the boundary between two compartments. The......
two-dimensional echocardiography (medicine)
...M-mode echocardiography, however, does not permit effective evaluation of the shape of cardiac structures, nor does it depict lateral motion (i.e., motion perpendicular to the ultrasonic beam). Real-time (cross-sectional or two-dimensional) echocardiography depicts cardiac shape and lateral movement not available in M-mode echocardiography by moving the ultrasonic beam very rapidly, and......
two-dimensional gel electrophoresis
Charge (IEF) and size (SDS-protein complex) separations can be combined in a two-dimensional approach. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis is one of the most powerful resolving methods now available....
two-dimensional planar chromatography
...or sheet and developed, the mobile phase is evaporated, and the plate is rotated 90° so that the spots become the origins for a second development with a different developer. This is termed two-dimensional planar chromatography....
two-eyed berry (plant)
(Mitchella repens), North American plant of the madder family (Rubiaceae), growing in dry woods from southwestern Newfoundland to Minnesota and southward to Florida and Texas. It is evergreen, with nearly round, 18-millimetre (0.7-inch) leaves,...
two-field system (agriculture)
basis of agricultural organization in Europe and the Middle East in early times. Arable land was divided into two fields or groups of fields; one group was planted to wheat, barley, or rye, while the other was allowed to lie fallow until the next planting season to recover its fertility. After cropping the first group of fi...
two-handed dead lift (weightlifting)
...must drop to or below parallel with the ground, demonstrates leg power. The bench press, done from a prone position and requiring a pause of the barbell at the chest, shows upper-body strength. The two-handed dead lift, in which the lifter raises the weight from the floor to hip level in one movement, displays overall back and gripping power. Lifters are allowed three attempts in each lift at.....
two-hinged truss (construction)
Long-span structures in steel developed more slowly than the high-rise in the years from 1895 to 1945, and none exceeded the span of the Gallery of Machines. Two-hinge (made of a single member hinged at each end) and three-hinge (made of two members hinged at each end and at the meeting point at the crown) trussed arches were widely used, the largest examples being two great airship hangars for......