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Cronos (Greek god)
in ancient Greek religion, male deity who was worshipped by the pre-Hellenic population of Greece but probably was not widely worshipped by the Greeks themselves; he was later identified with the Roman god Saturn. Cronus’s functions were connected with agriculture; in Attica his festival, the Kronia, celebrated the harvest and resembled the Saturnalia. In art he was depicted as an old man h...
Cronstedt, Axel Fredrik (Swedish mineralogist and chemist)
Swedish mineralogist and chemist noted for his work on the chemistry of metallic elements and for his efforts to establish a new mineralogical system. He is also credited with developing an experimental procedure involving the systematic use of blowpipes for analyzing the chemical composition of minerals....
Cronus (Greek god)
in ancient Greek religion, male deity who was worshipped by the pre-Hellenic population of Greece but probably was not widely worshipped by the Greeks themselves; he was later identified with the Roman god Saturn. Cronus’s functions were connected with agriculture; in Attica his festival, the Kronia, celebrated the harvest and resembled the Saturnalia. In art he was depicted as an old man h...
Cronyn, Hume (American actor)
Canadian-born actor who earned acclaim for his convincing portrayals of diverse characters and was especially noted for his acting partnership with Jessica Tandy, his wife. They became known as the “first couple of the American theatre.”...
Cronyn, Hume Blake (American actor)
Canadian-born actor who earned acclaim for his convincing portrayals of diverse characters and was especially noted for his acting partnership with Jessica Tandy, his wife. They became known as the “first couple of the American theatre.”...
crook (musical instrument part)
in brass musical instruments, detachable piece of metal tubing inserted between the mouthpiece and the main tubing or in the middle of the tubing to lengthen the air column produced. This manipulation allows the player to obtain notes not included in the harmonic series of the original air column. Crooks were in use at leas...
Crook, George (United States army officer)
American army officer in the American Civil War and in the Indian conflicts of the West. General William Tecumseh Sherman called him the best of the Indian fighters and managers....
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (album by Pavement)
...so, the commercial breakthrough of alternative rock with Nirvana’s Nevermind (1991) proved too obvious a target for Malkmus to resist, and 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain sniped at groups such as the Smashing Pumpkins and the Stone Temple Pilots, while also slicking up the pop enough to get Pavement some MTV exposure wi...
Crookes dark space (electronics)
...work of various kinds at his private laboratory in London. His researches on electrical discharges through a rarefied gas led him to observe the dark space around the cathode, now called the Crookes dark space. He demonstrated that cathode rays travel in straight lines and produce phosphorescence and heat when they strike certain materials. He invented many devices to study the behaviour......
Crookes radiometer (instrument)
...gases, after the Danish physicist Martin Knudsen, who studied them experimentally. Many of their properties are strikingly different from those of ordinary gases (also known as continuum gases). A radiometer is a four-vaned mill that depends essentially on free-molecule effects. A temperature difference in the free-molecule gas causes a thermomolecular pressure difference that drives the......
Crookes, Sir William (British chemist)
British chemist and physicist noted for his discovery of the element thallium and for his cathode-ray studies, fundamental in the development of atomic physics....
Crooks, Lesane Parish (American rapper and actor)
American rapper and actor who was one of the leading names in 1990s gangsta rap....
Crookston (Minnesota, United States)
city, seat (1873) of Polk county, northwestern Minnesota, U.S. It lies on Red Lake River, about 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Sioux and Ojibwa Indians were early inhabitants of the area. Settled in 1872, the city is named f...
Croome, A. C. M. (British athlete)
...led to a conventional step pattern for hurdlers—3 steps between each high hurdle, 7 between each low hurdle, and usually 15 between each intermediate hurdle. Further refinements were made by A.C.M. Croome of Oxford University about 1885, when he went over the hurdle with one leg extended straight ahead at the same time giving a forward lunge of the trunk, the basis of modern hurdling......
crop (animal digestive organ)
...the stomach but rather may serve as a storage reservoir or an ancillary digestive organ. In many birds, for example, an expanded region of the esophagus anterior to the stomach forms a thin-walled crop, which is the bird’s principal organ for the temporary storage of food. Some birds use the crop to carry food to their young. Ruminant mammals, such as the cow, are often said to have four...
crop (agriculture)
In agriculture, a plant or plant product that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. By use, crops fall into six categories: food crops, for human consumption (e.g., wheat, potatoes); feed crops, for livestock consumption (e.g., oats, alfalfa); fibre crops, for cordage and textiles (e.g., cotton, hemp); oil crops, for consumption or industrial uses (e.g., cottonseed, cor...
crop circle
large geometric pattern of flattened crops, most often found in fields in southern England. Crop circles are said by some who have studied them to be messages from intelligent extraterrestrial life, but many have been proved to be the work of humans....
crop drying (agriculture)
In the most common method of crop drying, the crop, usually grain, is spread on floors or mats and stirred frequently while exposed to the sun. Such systems, though extremely common in the underdeveloped countries, are very slow and dependent on the weather. Forced-air-drying systems allow the farmer much more freedom in choosing grain varieties and harvest time. Fairly simple in operation,......
crop duster (agriculture)
usually, an aircraft used for dusting or spraying large acreages with pesticides, though other types of dusters are also employed. Aerial spraying and dusting permit prompt coverage of large areas at the moment when application of pesticide is most effective and avoid the need for wheeled vehicles that might damage crops. The technique was greatly improved in the 1960s with the development of ult...
crop farming (agriculture)
The persistence of relatively low-productivity agricultural systems over large parts of the continent also stems from a lack of integration between crop production and animal husbandry. Traditionally, sedentary cultivators like the Hausa in Nigeria and the Kikuyu in Kenya live apart from their nomadic herdsmen neighbours (the Fulani and Masai, respectively), with the result that over large......
crop milk (nutritive substance)
...South America and a few in temperate Eurasia and North America. All members of the family suck liquids, rather than sip and swallow as do other birds, and all pigeon parents feed their young “pigeon’s milk,” the sloughed-off lining of the crop, the production of which is stimulated by the hormone prolactin. The nestling obtains this “milk” by poking its bill d...
Crop Over (harvest festival)
One of the country’s cultural traditions is Crop Over, an annual multi-week summer festival that has its historical origins in sugarcane harvest celebrations. The harvest celebrations died out in the mid-20th century, but Crop Over was reborn in the 1970s as a festival of musical (notably calypso), culinary, and other arts. Crop Over culminates in the Grand Kadooment, a carnival parade that...
crop production (agriculture)
The persistence of relatively low-productivity agricultural systems over large parts of the continent also stems from a lack of integration between crop production and animal husbandry. Traditionally, sedentary cultivators like the Hausa in Nigeria and the Kikuyu in Kenya live apart from their nomadic herdsmen neighbours (the Fulani and Masai, respectively), with the result that over large......
crop rotation (agriculture)
the successive cultivation of different crops in a specified order on the same fields, in contrast to a one-crop system or to haphazard crop successions....
crop-and-fallow 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...
cropland (agriculture)
Grasslands frequently have been converted to cropland on which edible grains are grown; this allows food for humans to be taken directly from the grasslands themselves rather than via grazing animals feeding on the native grasses in a rangeland situation. The increase in yields is substantial. According to figures compiled for the northern Great Plains of North America, for example, one hectare......
Cropper, Steve (American musician)
...artist. “Pickett was a pistol,” said Wexler, who nicknamed him “the Wicked Pickett” and sent him to Memphis, Tennessee, to write with Otis Redding’s collaborator, guitarist Steve Cropper of Booker T. and the MG’s. The result was a smash single, In the Midnight Hour (1965). From that moment on, Pickett was a star. With his dazzli...
cropping system (agriculture)
Olive groves and vineyards were permanent; grain and pulses were annuals. Although it was realized that different soils were better suited to some crops than to others, the same piece of land was used for all crops. A specific crop, however, was grown in alternate years in what is known as the two-field, or crop-and-fallow, system. The fallow land was plowed two or three times during the fallow......
croquet (sport)
popular outdoor game, played on a lawn or court, with long-handled mallets with which the players hit balls through a series of wickets, or hoops....
Croquet Association (British organization)
In the United Kingdom, croquet tournaments are governed by the Croquet Association, founded in 1896, which sponsors the open championships; the men’s, women’s, and mixed-doubles championships; and invitational events, including the President’s Cup. Separate governing bodies for croquet also exist in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In the 1970s, interest in associatio...
Croqueuse de diamants, La (work by Petit)
...cigarettes and telephones. His works included the realistic ballet Les Forains (1945; “The Strolling Players”), a study of indigent circus performers; the imaginative creation La Croqueuse de diamants (1950; “The Diamond Cruncher”), whose heroine eats the gems her associates steal; and L’Oeuf à la coque (1949; “The Soft-Boile...
croquis (art)
...an artist would employ many assistants, sketches were made by the master for works to be completed by others. There are three main types of functional sketches. The first—sometimes known as a croquis—is intended to remind the artist of some scene or event he has seen and wishes to record in a more permanent form. The second—a pochade—is one in which he records, usual...
Croquis, Alfred (Irish painter)
Irish historical painter whose fame rests chiefly on a series of lithograph portraits of contemporary celebrities and on two vast frescoes that he painted in the Royal Gallery in the House of Lords....
Cros, Charles (French inventor and poet)
French inventor and poet whose work in several fields foreshadowed or paralleled important developments....
Cros, Émile-Hortensius-Charles (French inventor and poet)
French inventor and poet whose work in several fields foreshadowed or paralleled important developments....
crosánacht (Gaelic literary genre)
...Norman invaders, were used with native bardic wit and felicitous style to produce the enchanting poems called dánta grádha. A different departure from praise poetry was the crosánacht, in which verse was frequently interspersed with humorous or satirical prose passages....
Crosby, Bing (American singer, actor, and songwriter)
American singer, actor, and songwriter who achieved great popularity in radio, recordings, and motion pictures. He became the archetypal crooner of a period when the advent of radio broadcasting and talking pictures and the refinement of sound-recording techniques made the climate ideal for the rise of such a figure. His casual stage manner and mellow, relaxed singing style influenced two generati...
Crosby, Bob (American bandleader)
("BOB"), U.S. bandleader (b. Aug. 25, 1913, Spokane, Wash.--d. March 9, 1993, La Jolla, Calif.), was a mediocre vocalist but was able to capitalize on the star status of his older brother Bing, a famous crooner, to secure engagements for his swing band, the Bobcats, which produced a string of hit songs, including "South Rampart Street Parade," "The Big Crash from China," and "The Big Noise from Wi...
Crosby, Caresse (French poet and publisher)
In 1927 he and his wife, Caresse Crosby, née Jacob (1892–1970), began to publish their own poetry under the imprint Editions Narcisse, later the Black Sun Press. The following year they started printing books by other writers, such as Archibald MacLeish, D.H. Lawrence, and James Joyce, for which the press is best remembered....
Crosby, David (American musician)
...Nov. 17, 1941Tipton, Mo.—d. May 24, 1991, Sherman Oaks, Calif.), David Crosby (original name David Van Cortland; b. Aug. 14, 1941Los Angeles, Calif.),...
Crosby, Fanny (American hymn writer)
American writer of hymns, the best known of which was “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.”...
Crosby, Frances Jane (American hymn writer)
American writer of hymns, the best known of which was “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.”...
Crosby, George Robert (American bandleader)
("BOB"), U.S. bandleader (b. Aug. 25, 1913, Spokane, Wash.--d. March 9, 1993, La Jolla, Calif.), was a mediocre vocalist but was able to capitalize on the star status of his older brother Bing, a famous crooner, to secure engagements for his swing band, the Bobcats, which produced a string of hit songs, including "South Rampart Street Parade," "The Big Crash from China," and "The Big Noise from Wi...
Crosby, Harry (American poet and publisher)
American poet who, as an expatriate in Paris in the 1920s, established the Black Sun Press....
Crosby, Harry Lillis (American singer, actor, and songwriter)
American singer, actor, and songwriter who achieved great popularity in radio, recordings, and motion pictures. He became the archetypal crooner of a period when the advent of radio broadcasting and talking pictures and the refinement of sound-recording techniques made the climate ideal for the rise of such a figure. His casual stage manner and mellow, relaxed singing style influenced two generati...
Crosby, Henry Grew (American poet and publisher)
American poet who, as an expatriate in Paris in the 1920s, established the Black Sun Press....
Crosby, John O’Hea (American impresario)
American impresario (b. July 12, 1926, New York, N.Y.—d. Dec. 15, 2002, Rancho Mirage, Calif.), was the founder, in 1957, of the Santa Fe (N.M.) Opera and served as its general director until he stepped down in 2000. The company gained international renown after Igor Stravinsky participated in the 1957–63 seaso...
Crosby, Sidney (Canadian ice hockey player)
Canadian ice hockey player who in 2007 became the youngest captain of a National Hockey League (NHL) team and who in 2009 helped lead the Pittsburgh Penguins to a Stanley Cup championship....
Crosby, Stills and Nash (British-American rock group)
British-American trio—and, with Neil Young, quartet, as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young—whose acoustic and electric folk rock songs became musical primers for hippies following Woodstock. The members were David Crosby (original name David Van Cortland; b...
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (British-American rock group)
British-American trio—and, with Neil Young, quartet, as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young—whose acoustic and electric folk rock songs became musical primers for hippies following Woodstock. The members were David Crosby (original name David Van Cortland; b...
crosier (religion)
staff with a curved top that is a symbol of the Good Shepherd and is carried by bishops of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and some European Lutheran churches and by abbots and abbesses as an insignia of their ecclesiastical office and, in former times, of temporal power. It is made of metal or carved wood and is often very ornate. Possibly derived from the ordinary walking stick, it was first menti...
crosier (fern leaf)
...possess a rhizome (horizontal stem) that grows partially underground; the deeply divided fronds (leaves) and the roots grow out of the rhizome. Fronds are characteristically coiled in the bud (fiddleheads) and uncurl in a type of leaf development called circinate vernation. Fern leaves are either whole or variously divided. The leaf types are differentiated into rachis (axis of a compound......
Crosier War (Norwegian history)
In 1196 the dissident bishop of Oslo, Nicholas Arnesson, joined forces with the exiled archbishop Erik Ivarsson and returned to Norway with a fleet, precipitating the Crosier War, a rebellion of the Crosiers, a group headed by religious and secular leaders opposed to Sverrir’s ecclesiastical and administrative reforms. Nicholas gained control of much of eastern Norway, won the support of th...
Crosland, Alan (American film director)
...After mounting a $3 million promotion, Warner Brothers debuted the system on Aug. 6, 1926, with Don Juan, a lavish costume drama starring John Barrymore, directed by Alan Crosland, and featuring a score performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The response was enthusiastic; Warner Brothers announced that all of its films for 1927 would be released with......
cross (religious symbol)
the principal symbol of the Christian religion, recalling the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the redeeming benefits of his Passion and death. The cross is thus a sign both of Christ himself and of the faith of Christians. In ceremonial usage, making a sign of the cross may be, according...
cross (boxing)
There are four basic punches: the jab, hook, uppercut, and straight right (straight left for a southpaw), which is sometimes referred to as a “cross.” All other punches are modifications of these basic punches. The jab, whether thrown from an orthodox or a southpaw stance, is a straight punch delivered with the lead hand, which moves directly out from the shoulder. The hook, also......
Cross Act (United Kingdom [1875])
...were allowed to engage in peaceful picketing and to do whatever would not be criminal if done by an individual. The Public Health Act of 1875 created a public health authority in every area; the Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act of the same year enabled local authorities to embark upon schemes of slum clearance; a factory act of 1878 fixed a 56-hour workweek; whil...
Cross, Amanda (American author and literary critic)
American scholar and feminist literary critic who became known for the mystery stories she published under a pseudonym....
Cross and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Nuns of the (religious order)
St. Paul also founded the Passionist Nuns (Nuns of the Cross and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ), approved by Pope Clement XIV in 1771. Passionist Sisters were established in 1852 in England....
cross axis
...symmetry, in addition to the anteroposterior axis, there are also two other axes or planes of symmetry at right angles to it and to each other: the sagittal, or median vertical-longitudinal, and transverse, or cross, axes. Such an animal therefore not only has two ends but also has two pairs of symmetrical sides. There are but two planes of symmetry in a biradial animal, one passing through......
cross birth (childbirth)
...which projects into the vagina. In nearly all deliveries the presenting part is the vertex, the top of the head; in 3 or 4 percent of deliveries, it is the breech (buttocks). Face presentation and transverse (cross) presentation are rare....
cross bridge (biology)
...troponin-tropomyosin system (associated with the thin actin filaments), producing a conformational change that allows actin and myosin to interact. This interaction in the presence of ATP results in cross-bridge cycling and ATP hydrolysis. The force developed in the whole muscle is the sum of all the forces developed by each of the millions of cycling cross bridges of the muscle. The free......
Cross, Christopher (American recording artist)
...ArkOriginal Score: Vangelis for Chariots of FireOriginal Song: “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” from Arthur; music and lyrics by Peter Allen, Burt Bacharach, Christopher Cross, Carole Bayer SagerHonorary Award: Barbara Stanwyck...
Cross City (Mississippi, United States)
city, seat (1870) of Alcorn county, northeastern Mississippi, U.S. It is situated 85 miles (137 km) east of Memphis, Tennessee, near the Tennessee border. Founded in about 1855 as the junction of the Memphis and Charleston and the Mobile and Ohio railroads, it was called Cross City until...
Cross Creek (novel by Rawlings)
...made into a motion picture (1946) and over subsequent years gradually assumed the status of a classic. Many of Rawlings’s stories were collected in When the Whippoorwill (1940). Cross Creek (1942; filmed 1983) describes her life in the Florida country and displays her striking ability to convey in poetic prose her deep feelings of kinship to nature as well as he...
cross dating (archaeology)
...Conversely, an object from an undated culture may be found at a site whose date is known. Thus nonliterate communities can be dated by their contact with literate ones. This technique is known as cross dating; it was first developed by Sir Flinders Petrie when he dated Palestinian and early Greek (Aegean) sites by reference to Egyptian ones. Much of the prehistoric chronology of Europe in the.....
cross education (learning)
influence the learning of one skill has on the learning or performance of another. Will knowledge of English help a person learn German? Are skillful table-tennis (Ping-Pong) players generally good court-tennis players? Can a child who does not know how to add learn to multiply? Such questions represent the problems of transfer of training....
cross flute (musical instrument)
...South America, Africa, and elsewhere, a notch may be cut in the edge to facilitate sound generation (notched flutes). Vertical nose flutes are also found, especially in Oceania. In transverse, or cross, flutes (i.e., horizontally held and side blown), the stream of breath strikes the opposite rim of a lateral mouth hole. Vertical flutes such as the recorder, in which an internal flue or duct......
cross fox (mammal)
...ears and legs. Colour, however, is variable; in North America black and silver coats are found, with a variable amount of white or white-banded hair occurring in a black coat. A form called the cross, or brant, fox is yellowish brown with a black cross extending between the shoulders and down the back; it is found in both North America and the Old World. The Samson fox is a mutant strain of......
Cross, Hardy (American engineer)
U.S. professor of civil and structural engineering whose outstanding contribution was a method of calculating tendencies to produce motion (moments) in the members of a continuous framework, such as the skeleton of a building....
Cross in the Mountains, The (work by Friedrich)
...His drawings in sepia, executed in his neat early style, won the poet J.W. von Goethe’s approval and a prize from the Weimar Art Society in 1805. His first important oil painting, “The Cross in the Mountains” (c. 1807), established his mature style, characterized by an overwhelming sense of isolation, and was an attempt to replace the traditional symbology of religio...
Cross, James (British diplomat)
...intellectuals with the world outside Canada. In October 1970 a terrorist group, the Front de Libération du Québec (Quebec Liberation Front), kidnapped the British trade commissioner, James Cross, and Quebec’s labour minister, Pierre Laporte, who was subsequently murdered. Quebec’s government asked for federal intervention, prompting enactment of the War Measures Act,...
Cross, Marian (British author)
English Victorian novelist who developed the method of psychological analysis characteristic of modern fiction. Her major works include Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1...
Cross, Mary Ann (British author)
English Victorian novelist who developed the method of psychological analysis characteristic of modern fiction. Her major works include Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1...
Cross, Monastery of the (monastery, Jerusalem)
...architecture of the first half of the 1st millennium bce (Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter) and the Second Temple period (Tombs of the Kings, Tomb of Absalom, and Tomb of Zechariah). The restored Monastery of the Cross, in the heart of modern west Jerusalem, dates originally from the 5th century....
Cross of Broughton-in-Furness, Richard Assheton Cross, 1st Viscount (British statesman)
British statesman responsible for the first urban renewal authorization in Great Britain, the Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act (generally known as the first Cross Act) of 1875....
“Cross of Gold” speech (speech by Bryan)
(See William Jennings Bryan, .) (July 8, 1896), classic of American political oratory delivered by William Jennings Bryan in closing the debate on the party platform at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1896. In an eloquent attack on the thesis that gold was the only sound backing for currency, Bryan closed with t...
Cross of St. Andrew (emblem)
...the Civil War, many wished to assert the identity of the state through a distinctive flag. The design chosen in 1895 was white with a red saltire. The flag law referred to the design as a “Cross of St. Andrew,” although that name, as used in Scotland, had always signified a white saltire....
Cross of St. George (emblem)
Several other flags also exist for The Bahamas. Most important are its civil ensign (flown on privately owned vessels at sea) and its war flag. The civil ensign consists of a white Cross of St. George on a field of red with the national flag in the canton. The war flag is a red Cross of St. George on a white field with the national flag in the canton....
Cross of St. Patrick (emblem)
...“Union Flag,” or “Great Union,” continue in use until January 1, 1801, the effective date of the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland. In order to incorporate the Cross of St. Patrick (a red diagonal cross on white) while preserving the individual entities of the three crosses, the heraldic advisers to the sovereign found an elegant solution. The existing.....
cross over (music)
popular musical form in which modern jazz improvisation is accompanied by the bass lines, drumming styles, and instrumentation of rock music, with a strong emphasis on electronic i...
cross presentation (childbirth)
...which projects into the vagina. In nearly all deliveries the presenting part is the vertex, the top of the head; in 3 or 4 percent of deliveries, it is the breech (buttocks). Face presentation and transverse (cross) presentation are rare....
cross product (mathematics)
The cross product (also known as the vector product) combines two vectors to form another vector, perpendicular to the plane of the original vectors. The operation is written A × B. If θしーた is the (smaller) angle between A and B, then|A × B|= AB sin......
Cross Purpose (play by Camus)
...plays to working-class audiences. He maintained a deep love of the theatre until his death. Ironically, his plays are the least-admired part of his literary output, although Le Malentendu (Cross Purpose) and Caligula, first produced in 1944 and 1945, respectively, remain landmarks in the Theatre of the Absurd. Two of his most enduring contributions to the theatre may well b...
cross ratio (mathematics)
in projective geometry, ratio that is of fundamental importance in characterizing projections. In a projection of one line onto another from a central point (see ), the double ratio of lengths on the first line (AC/AD)/(BC/BD) is equal to the corresponding ratio on the other line. Such a r...
Cross, Richard Assheton Cross, 1st Viscount (British statesman)
British statesman responsible for the first urban renewal authorization in Great Britain, the Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act (generally known as the first Cross Act) of 1875....
Cross River (state, Nigeria)
state, southeastern Nigeria. What is now Cross River state was part of the former Eastern region until 1967, when it became South-Eastern state; it received its present name in 1976. In 1987 the southwestern third of Cross River state became a new state called Akwa Ibom....
Cross River (river, Africa)
river in western Africa (mostly in southeastern Nigeria) that rises in several branches in the highlands of western Cameroon. Thence it flows in a westerly direction and enters Nigeria. Turning in a southwesterly direction after its confluence with the Aya River in Nigeria, it flows south (after receiving the Western Aboine...
Cross River languages
The 60 Cross River languages are situated around the Cross River in southeastern Nigeria and westward toward the Niger Delta. The largest of these languages is Ibibio, which together with its written cousin, Efik, has some 3,500,000 speakers. Other languages with more than 100,000 speakers are Anang, Khana, Ogbia, Loko, Mbembe, Obolo, and Gokana....
cross section (physics)
in nuclear or subatomic particle physics, probability that a given atomic nucleus or subatomic particle will exhibit a specific reaction (for example, absorption, scattering, or fission) in relation to a particular species of incident particle. Cross section is expressed ...
cross, sign of the (Christian ritual)
a gesture of ancient Christian origin by which a person blesses himself, others, or objects. St. Cyprian explained the ritual in the 3rd century by reference to Christ’s redemptive death on the cross. The sign of the cross is used throughout Christian litu...
cross slide (machinery)
...mounted on the cross slide. This turret also can be rotated about its vertical axis and permits the use of a variety of turning tools. A tool post, or tool block, can be clamped to the rear of the cross slide for mounting additional tools. The cross slide can be actuated either by hand or by power....
cross spider (arachnid)
a member of the orb weaver family Araneidae (order Araneida) characterized by white marks arranged in the form of a cross on the abdomen. A fairly common species, the garden spider occurs throughout the Northern Hemisphere and is often found in grassy areas and gardens, where it builds an orb-shaped web on low shrubs. During the day the spider remains in the centre of its web, head downward. In ge...
Cross, Stations of the (religion)
a series of 14 pictures or carvings portraying events in the Passion of Christ, from his condemnation by Pontius Pilate to his entombment. The series of stations is as follows: (1) Jesus is condemned to death, (2) he is made to bear his cross, (3) he falls the first time, (4) he meets his mother, (5) Simon of Cyrene is made ...
cross tabulation (statistics)
...Another tabular summary, called a relative frequency distribution, shows the fraction, or percentage, of data values in each class. The most common tabular summary of data for two variables is a cross tabulation, a two-variable analogue of a frequency distribution....
cross talk (communications)
...from high attenuation, radiation losses, and a sensitivity to external interference. One common cause of interference is natural electrical disturbances such as lightning or auroras; another is cross talk, an unwanted transferral of signals from one circuit to another owing to inductive coupling between two or more closely spaced wire lines....
Cross Timbers (region, Texas, United States)
The Cross Timbers, a forest region with light-coloured, slightly acid sandy loam soil, stretches across the prairies of northern Texas, enclosing part of the Grand Prairie. Red sandy and dark clay soils are found in the Llano Basin, in the centre of the state. The Edwards Plateau has thin, stony soil with a limestone bedrock....
Cross, True (Christian relic)
Christian relic, reputedly the wood of the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. Legend relates that the True Cross was found by St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, during her pilgrimage to the ...
cross validation (psychology)
...to or predictive of any aspect of behaviour observed independently of that measure contributes to its validity in general. A most desirable step in establishing the usefulness of a measure is called cross-validation. The mere fact that one research study yields positive evidence of validity is no guarantee that the measure will work as well the next time; indeed, often it does not. It is thus.....
cross vault (architecture)
Two large fragments of great concrete cross-vault buildings still survive from the late empire. The first of these is a portion of the Baths of Diocletian (c. 298–306) with a span of 26 metres (85 feet); it was converted into the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli by Michelangelo in the 16th century. The other is the Basilica of Constantine (ad 307–312), also wit...