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crabeater seal (mammal)
(species Lobodon carcinophagus), southern seal of the family Phocidae found among drifting ice packs around the Antarctic continent. A slender animal measuring about 2–2.5 m (6.6–8.2 feet) long and up to about 225 kg (500 pounds) ...
crabgrass (plant genus)
any of about 300 species of grasses in the genus Digitaria (family Poaceae), especially D. sanguinalis or the slightly shorter D. ischaemum (smooth crabgrass). D. sanguinalis has long hairs covering its leaves and has five or six spikelets, while D. ischaemum has no hair and only two or three spikelets. Both species are natives of Europe that became widely...
Crabtree, Charlotte (American actress)
American actress whose early days as an entertainer during the California Gold Rush led to her immense popularity as the darling of the American stage and in England....
Crabtree, Lotta (American actress)
American actress whose early days as an entertainer during the California Gold Rush led to her immense popularity as the darling of the American stage and in England....
Cracidae (bird family)
Annotated classification...
crack (drug)
...or smoked in a chemically treated form known as freebase; either of these methods produces a markedly more compulsive use of the drug. In the 1980s a new preparation of cocaine appeared, called crack; the smoking of crack produces an even more intense and even more short-lived euphoria that is extremely addicting. This form of cocaine consumption is also the one most detrimental to health.......
crack willow (plant)
Three of the largest willows are black (S. nigra), crack, or brittle (S. fragilis), and white (S. alba), all reaching 20 metres (65 feet) or more; the first named is North American, the other two Eurasian but naturalized widely. All are common in lowland situations....
Crack-Up, The (work by Fitzgerald)
essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published serially in Esquire magazine in 1936 and posthumously, in book form, in The Crack-Up: With Other Uncollected Pieces, Note-Books, and Unpublished Letters (1945). This confessional essay documents Fitzgerald’s spiritual and physical deterioration in the mid-1930s....
cracker (food)
...of rollers, forming sheets of uniform thickness; the desired outline is cut in the sheet by stamping pressure or embossed rollers; and the scrap dough is removed for reprocessing. Many cookies and crackers are made in this way, and designs may be impressed in the dough pieces by docking pins (used primarily to puncture the sheet, preventing formation of excessively large gas bubbles) or by......
cracking (materials failure)
...the subject extended beyond the Griffith energy theory and, in its simplest and most widely employed version in engineering practice, used Irwin’s stress intensity factor as the basis for predicting crack growth response under service loadings in terms of laboratory data that is correlated in terms of that factor. That stress intensity factor is the coefficient of a characteristic singul...
cracking (chemical process)
in petroleum refining, process by which heavy hydrocarbon molecules are broken up into lighter molecules by means of heat and usually pressure and sometimes catalysts. Cracking is the most important process for the commercial production of gasoline....
crackle (medicine)
In most persons who experience an acute myocardial infarction, the circulation remains adequate, and only by subtle evidence such as rales (abnormal respiratory sounds) in the lungs or a gallop rhythm of the heartbeat may the evidence of some minor degree of heart failure be detected. In a small percentage of cases, the state of shock occurs, with pallor, coolness of the hands and feet, low......
crackling (animal product)
...vessel containing hog fats. Open-kettle-rendered or dry-rendered (enclosed-system) lards, which are darker in colour, are made by melting hog fats in steam-jacketed vessels; the residue is called cracklings. Neutral lard is prepared by melting leaf fat (from around the kidneys) and back fat at about 49° C (120° F). Continuous rendering involves grinding, rapid heating, and separat...
crackowe (shoe)
long, pointed, spiked shoe worn by both men and women first in the mid-14th century and then condemned by law. Crakows were named after the city of Kraków (Cracow), Pol., and they were also known as poulaines (Polish). Crakows were admired on the feet of the courtiers of Anne of Bohemia, who married Richard II of England. The exaggerated toes were imitated even in armour....
Cracow (Poland)
city and capital of Małopolskie województwo (province), southern Poland, lying on both sides of the upper Vistula River. One of the largest cities in Poland, it is known primarily for its grand historic architecture and cultural leadership; UNESCO designated its old town area a World Heritage site in 1978. I...
Cracow, Republic of (historical state, Poland)
tiny state that for the 31 years of its existence (1815–46) was the only remaining independent portion of Poland. Established by the Congress of Vienna at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars (1815), the free Republic of Cracow consisted of the ancient city of Cracow (Kraków...
Cracow, university at (university, Kraków, Poland)
...of one law in Little Poland and Great Poland, Masovia and Red Russia kept their own nonwritten law. Wishing to educate native lawyers and administrators, he founded the Academy of Kraków (now Jagiellonian University) in 1364....
Cracticidae (bird family)
songbird family, of the order Passeriformes, that includes species of the bell-magpie, butcherbird, and currawong groups of Australia. They are sometimes collectively called songshrikes, from their vocal powers and their shrikelike behaviour....
Cracticus torquatus (bird)
...28 cm (11 inches) long, with big feet and heavy, hook-tipped bills. Year-round, pairs defend their territory—they may attack humans—and sing beautiful duets. A familiar species is the gray butcherbird (C. torquatus)....
Craddock, Charles Egbert (American writer)
American writer in the local-colour movement, most of whose stories present the narrow, stern life of the Tennessee mountaineers who were left behind in the advance of civilization....
Craddock, Vincent Eugene (American singer)
American rockabilly singer whose swaggering, black-leather-clad image defined the look of the rock rebel. Discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1955 following a motorcycle accident in which his leg was seriously injured, Vincent tried his hand at country music. In 1956, with record companies frantically seeking their own answers to Elvi...
cradle (mining tool)
An improvement over the pan was the rocker, or cradle, named for its resemblance to a child’s cradle. As it was rocked, it sifted large quantities of ore. Gravel was shoveled onto a perforated iron plate, and water was poured over it, causing finer material to drop through the perforations and onto an apron that distributed it across the riffles. The apron distributed the material across......
cradle (harvesting tool)
in agriculture, rakelike harvesting implement of wood, devised in ancient times for gathering the stalks of wheat, oats, barley, and other grains (first cut with the sickle) and laying them in rows for binding. The later cradle scythe invented in Europe consisted of a framework of long, fingerlike prongs attached to the cutting edge of a long-handled scythe. The device was swung like the usual sc...
cradle (printmaking tool)
...hold ink and, when printed, produce large areas of tone. The pricking of the plate was originally done with a roulette (a small wheel covered with sharp points), but later an instrument called a cradle, or rocker, was used. It resembles a small spade with a toothed edge, and its cutting action throws up rough ridges of metal called burrs. The burrs are scraped away in places intended to be......
cradle (furniture)
in furniture, infant’s bed of wood, wicker, or iron, having enclosed sides and suspended from a bar, slung upon pivots, or mounted on rockers. The rocking motion of the cradle is intended to lull the infant to sleep. The cradle is an ancient type of furniture, and its origins are unknown. Early cradles developed from hollowed-out tree trunks to oblong, lidless wood boxes, originally with ap...
Cradle Mountain (mountain, Tasmania, Australia)
mountain situated at the northern boundary of the 622-square-mile (1,611-square-kilometre) Cradle Mountain–Lake St. Clair National Park, in northwest-central Tasmania, Australia. Located on Tasmania’s central plateau, its lava basalt peak rises to 5,069 feet (1,545 m). It is an arête (narrow ridge) that resembles a cradle, hence the name. Henry Hellyer, a su...
Cradle, The (painting by Morisot)
...was detectable in Degas’s picture of Paul Valpinçon and his family at the races called “Carriage at the Races” (1870–73; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Berthe Morisot’s “The Cradle” (1873; Louvre [see photograph]). Manet himself was absent, hoping for academic success; his “Gare Saint-Lazare” (1873;...
cradle vault (architecture)
ceiling or roof consisting of a series of semicylindrical arches. See vault....
Cradle Will Rock (film by Robbins [1999])
...in Dead Man Walking, which was written and directed by Robbins. Sarandon again worked with Robbins in his film about the WPA Federal Theatre Project, Cradle Will Rock (1999), in which a group of actors attempt to produce a left-leaning musical during the 1930s....
Cradle Will Rock, The (work by Blitzstein)
...at 7, and at 15 being introduced as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the 1920s he studied piano with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Arnold Schönberg in Berlin. His first opera, The Cradle Will Rock (1937), is the story of a capitalist’s resistance to unionization. Controversy surrounded much of Blitzstein’s work, which is experimental in subject matter and...
cradleboard
...unduly: young children nursed on demand, and weaning and toilet training were gradual. Children were protected from harm through careful tending and by means of magical prophylactics. Cradles and cradleboards were used, especially during the first year of life; the Hopi viewed swaddling as the first of many periods of conditioning that helped the individual to gain self-control. From birth,......
cradling (lacrosse)
...it, but—with the exception of the goalkeeper—he may not touch it with his hand. A player may kick the ball or bat it, but not into the opponents’ goal. A unique feature of the game is “cradling,” in which the player rapidly rotates the stick in half-turns while holding it nearly upright as he runs. The centrifugal force developed keeps the ball in the pocket o...
Cradock, Sir Christopher (British officer)
...coast and had been joined by two more cruisers, the Leipzig and the Dresden. On November 1, in the Battle of Coronel, it inflicted a sensational defeat on a British force, under Sir Christopher Cradock, which had sailed from the Atlantic to hunt it down: without losing a single ship, it sank Cradock’s two major cruisers, Cradock himself being killed. But the fortunes of the...
craft (art)
...by rigid, hereditary, hierarchical class structures. Kings and nobles ruled and were supported by warriors; priests served as government officials; merchants purveyed the products of artisans and craftsmen; peasants worked family farms; and slaves worked in mines and craft workshops. These workshops were prototypes of the modern factory, producing metal weapons and tools with fewer than a......
craft guild (organization)
British trade unionism has a long and continuous history. Medieval guilds, which regulated craft production, clearly differed in function from trade unions, in that guilds were combinations of both masters and workers while modern unions emerged to serve workers’ interests alone. However, aspects of guild regulation—as in matters relating to apprenticeship—were incorporated in...
craft lace
group of laces made by knitting, crochet, tatting, and macramé, as well as tape laces using straight machine tapes for the outer borders of the design motifs. Though some varieties were made professionally for commercial purposes, most craft laces were popular as domestic pastimes from the mid-19t...
Craft, Robert (American musician)
...Alban Berg, and especially Anton von Webern. (Serial music is based on the repetition of a series of tones in an arbitrary but fixed pattern without regard for traditional tonality.) According to Craft, who entered Stravinsky’s household in 1948 and remained his intimate associate until the composer’s death, the realization that he was regarded as a spent force threw Stravinsky in...
craft union (labour)
trade union combining workers who are engaged in a particular craft or skill but who may work for various employers and at various locations. Formed to improve wage levels and working conditions, craft unions were established in Britain and the ...
craft, water (transport)
Surviving clay tablets and containers record the use of waterborne vessels as early as 4000 bce. Boats are still vital aids to movement, even those little changed in form during that 6,000-year history. The very fact that boats may be quite easily identified in illustrations of great antiquity shows how slow and continuous had been this evolution until just 150 years ago. And though ...
Crafts, Hannah (American bondswoman and author)
...for herself and her two children. The Bondswoman’s Narrative—published in 2002 but written in the mid-1850s, apparently by an African American woman who signed herself Hannah Crafts—purports to be the autobiography of a fugitive slave from North Carolina. This unique manuscript, however, is also highly fictionalized, making it an important contribut...
Craftsman, The (British journal)
satirical poet, political pamphleteer on behalf of the Whigs, and editor of The Craftsman, a political journal of unprecedented popularity that was hostile to the Whig government of Sir Robert Walpole....
Craftsman, The (American magazine)
...movement. He spent the last months of his life in Syracuse, N.Y., working as an architect for Gustav Stickley. He contributed several architectural designs published in 1903 in The Craftsman, Stickley’s monthly magazine....
Craftsman Truck Series (auto racing championship)
...1984–2007), in which race cars that differ somewhat in engine and body size from Cup cars are used, and the Camping World Truck Series (founded as the Super Truck Series in 1995 and called the Craftsman Truck Series 1996–2008), in which race cars with bodies that mimic pickup trucks are used. NASCAR also sanctions a number of regional series in the United States. NASCAR’s.....
Craftsman’s Handbook, The (work by Cennini)
late Gothic Florentine painter who perpetuated the traditions of Giotto, which he received from his teacher Agnolo Gaddi. He is best known for writing Il libro dell’arte (1437; The Craftsman’s Handbook), the most informative source on the methods, techniques, and attitudes of medieval artists. Painting, according to Cennini, holds a high place among human occupations be...
craftsmanship (art)
...content, and expressiveness—is the concern of a designer, and it should be distinguished from the execution of the work in a particular technique and material, which is the task of a craftsman. A sculptor often functions as both designer and craftsman, but these two aspects of sculpture may be separated....
crag and tail (geology)
A crag and tail is distinguished from a roche moutonnée by the presence of an elongate, tapered ridge of till extending downstream. Often produced by selective erosion of softer strata, roche moutonnée landscapes are characteristic of glaciated crystalline shield areas....
Craggs, James (British politician)
English politician implicated in the South Sea Bubble (1720), a widespread speculation in shares of the South Sea Company, which had taken over most of the British national debt. The company persuaded investors to exchange their state annuities for the greatly overvalued stock, which rose as high as 1,000 during the summer of 1720 and fell to ...
Crago septemspinosus (crustacean)
The common European shrimp, or sand shrimp, Crangon vulgaris (Crago septemspinosus), occurs in coastal waters on both sides of the North Atlantic and grows to about 8 centimetres (3 inches); it is gray or dark brown with brown or reddish spots. The shrimp Peneus setiferus feeds on small plants and animals in coastal waters from North Carolina to Mexico; it attains lengths......
Craig, Daniel (British actor)
Daniel Craig returned as James Bond in Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster), a cold film so pumped up for action that characters scarcely had room to breathe. Livelier action-adventure was available in Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, a feast of rococo images and humour, and the Marvel Comics spin-off Iron Man (Jon Favreau), lifted out of the genre pile by ...
Craig, Edward Gordon (British actor and director)
English actor, theatre director-designer, producer, and theorist who influenced the development of the theatre in the 20th century....
Craig, Edward Henry Gordon (British actor and director)
English actor, theatre director-designer, producer, and theorist who influenced the development of the theatre in the 20th century....
Craig, James (American hockey player)
American ice hockey goaltender who was part of the U.S. hockey team that won the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, U.S. The American victory in the hockey tournament,...
Craig, James (British architect)
In 1767 the town council approved plans for the New Town as a suburban residential district, designed only for people “of a certain rank and fortune.” The architect, James Craig, set out a vision of order and space: a grid five streets deep and seven streets wide with a broad central axis terminating in grand squares at each end. St. George’s Church would anchor the western en...
Craig, James (prime minister of Northern Ireland)
soldier and statesman, a leading advocate of maintaining the union between Ireland and Great Britain, and the first prime minister of Northern Ireland (from June 22, 1921, until his death)....
Craig, John (British mathematician)
...was how to raise the probability that a jury or an electorate would decide correctly. One element involved testimonies, a classic topic of probability theory. In 1699 the British mathematician John Craig used probability to vindicate the truth of scripture and, more idiosyncratically, to forecast the end of time, when, due to the gradual attrition of truth through successive testimonies,......
Craig, Molly (Australian Aboriginal icon)
Australian Aboriginal icon (b. c. 1917, Jigalong, W.Aus., Australia—d. Jan. 13, 2004, Jigalong), walked, with her younger sister and a cousin, some 1,600 km (1,000 mi) home from the settlement she had been taken to as a young teenager; her journey inspired the 2002 movie Rabbit-Proof Fence. From 1905 to 1971, Australia followed a policy of attempting to assimilate mixed-race Aborigin...
Craig, Sir James Henry (governor general of Canada)
British soldier in the American Revolutionary War who later served as governor-general of Canada (1807–11) and was charged by French-Canadians with conducting a “reign of terror” in Quebec....
Craig-y-Llyn (mountain, Wales, United Kingdom)
...of Glamorgan (Morgannwg), Wales, at the northwestern end of the Cynon valley. The Brecon Beacons mountain range rises to the north of Hirwaun, and to the west rise the uplands of Hirwaun Common and Craig-y-Llyn peak, with an elevation of 1,969 feet (600 metres). Many Iron Age tools and weapons, as well as 6th-century-bce tools and ornaments fashioned from bronze, were found in the...
Craigavon (Northern Ireland, United Kingdom)
new town (built after 1966), Craigavon district, Northern Ireland, southwest of Belfast. Craigavon new town was developed under the New Towns Act of 1965 as a commercial, light industrial, and residential centre linking the older towns of Lurgan and Po...
Craigavon (district, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom)
district and borough, Northern Ireland, established in 1973 from portions of Counties Antrim, Down, and Armagh. It is situated south of Lake Neagh and is bordered by the districts of Dungannon to the west, Armagh to the southwest, Banbridge to the southeast, and Lisburn to the east. Its administrative seat is Craigavon ...
Craigavon, James Craig, 1st Viscount (prime minister of Northern Ireland)
soldier and statesman, a leading advocate of maintaining the union between Ireland and Great Britain, and the first prime minister of Northern Ireland (from June 22, 1921, until his death)....
Craigellachie (British Columbia, Canada)
...the 54th parallel in the north were considered, but the Fraser gorge route to the mouth of that river was selected. By 1885, when the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed by a joining of tracks at Craigellachie in British Columbia, Burrard Inlet, north of the Fraser mouth, was selected as a new port and was named for George Vancouver, the British naval captain who conducted the most detailed....
Craigellachie Bridge (bridge, Scotland, United Kingdom)
...region to survive—a fact noted by the Scottish engineer Thomas Telford, who then began to create a series of iron bridges that were judged to be technically the best of their time. The 1814 Craigellachie Bridge, over the River Spey in Scotland, is the oldest surviving metal bridge of Telford’s. Its 45-metre (150-foot) arch has a flat, nearly parabolic profile made up of two curved...
Craighead, Frank Cooper, Jr. (American naturalist)
American naturalist (b. Aug. 14, 1916, Washington, D.C.—d. Oct. 21, 2001, Jackson, Wyo.), with his identical twin, John, spent 12 years studying grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park...
Craigie, Jill (British director)
British motion picture director who was a pioneer in British documentary filmmaking in the 1940s as well as a noted feminist historian, particularly of the early suffragist movement; her films included Out of Chaos, an exploration of modern art and artists; The Way We Live, a study of ordinary life in Plymouth ...
Craigie, Sir William Alexander (British lexicographer)
Scottish lexicographer and language and literature scholar who was joint editor (1901–33) of The Oxford English Dictionary and chief editor (1923–36) of the four-volume Historical Dictionary of American English....
Craig’s list (corporation)
private corporation operating over the Internet to provide classified advertisements, community information services, and community forums. Most of these listings are restricted to specific locations, which include some 500 cities in 50 countries....
Craig’s Wife (work by Kelly)
...flourishing in the United States. His next play, The Show-Off (1924), became an American comedy classic, made three times as a film (1926, 1934, 1946) and often revived on the stage. In Craig’s Wife (1925), Kelly shifted his vision to the upper middle class and abandoned comedy to write a savage drama of a woman who sacrifices her husband to her possessions, ultimately losi...
Craigslist (corporation)
private corporation operating over the Internet to provide classified advertisements, community information services, and community forums. Most of these listings are restricted to specific locations, which include some 500 cities in 50 countries....
Crain, Jeanne (American actress)
American actress (b. May 25, 1925, Barstow, Calif.—d. Dec. 14, 2003, Santa Barbara, Calif.), gained a best actress Academy Award nomination for her starring role as a young black woman passing for white in the controversial 1949 film Pinky. During her three-decade-long career, she appeared in more than 60 movies...
Craine, Jack (Canadian broadcasting executive)
Canadian broadcasting executive who was a pioneer in public radio and television, guiding their growth and shaping their output (b. April 24, 1928, Lethbridge, Alta.?--d. March 16, 1998, London, Eng.)....
Craine, John Thornton (Canadian broadcasting executive)
Canadian broadcasting executive who was a pioneer in public radio and television, guiding their growth and shaping their output (b. April 24, 1928, Lethbridge, Alta.?--d. March 16, 1998, London, Eng.)....
Crainic, Nichifor (Romanian author)
Lyrical poetry of a considerable stylistic variety became the leading genre in Romanian literature after World War I. The diversity of styles can be illustrated by Nichifor Crainic’s religious traditionalist tendency, the programmatic esoterica of Ion Barbu (who was also an internationally renowned mathematician), the influence of French and German lyric poetry on Ion Pillat, and the bitter...
Crainquebille (work by France)
...diverted from his role of an armchair philosopher and detached observer of life by his commitment to support Dreyfus. After 1900 he introduced his social preoccupations into most of his stories. Crainquebille (1903), a comedy in three acts adapted by France from an earlier short story, dramatizes the unjust treatment of a small tradesman and proclaims the hostility toward the bourgeois.....
Crainquebille (film by Feyder)
...as an actor in 1912 and directed his first film the next year. The realistic L’Atlantide (1921), based on the novel by Pierre Benoît, was his first box-office success, but it was Crainquebille (1922), from Anatole France’s novel of daily Parisian life, that established his reputation as a director. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1928....
Craiova (Romania)
city, capital of Dolj județ (county), southwestern Romania. It is situated near the Jiu River, 115 miles (185 km) west of Bucharest. Settlement there is of long standing. Close to the city archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Roman fortress built under Trajan. Fr...
Craiova, Treaty of (Germany-Romania [1940])
...and Bulgaria now demanded Romanian territories for themselves, but Hitler intervened to prevent hostilities, lest Stalin see the chance to occupy the Romanian oil fields around Ploieşti. The Treaty of Craiova (August 21) awarded the Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, and the so-called Vienna Award by Hitler and Mussolini ceded northern Transylvania to Hungary. Romania’s King Carol II.....
Craiova, University of (university, Craiova, Romania)
...and Bulgaria now demanded Romanian territories for themselves, but Hitler intervened to prevent hostilities, lest Stalin see the chance to occupy the Romanian oil fields around Ploieşti. The Treaty of Craiova (August 21) awarded the Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, and the so-called Vienna Award by Hitler and Mussolini ceded northern Transylvania to Hungary. Romania’s King Carol II.....
crake (bird)
any of numerous marsh birds of the family Rallidae (order Gruiformes), generally any small rail in which the bill is short and conical. The name is chiefly European but can be extended to New World rails of this type. The most widespread genus is Porzana (13 species), typified by the spotted crake (P. porzana) found in Europe and eastward to Mongolia; in winter it ...
crakeberry (plant)
any species of the genus Empetrum, of the heath family (Ericaceae), particularly E. nigrum, an evergreen shrub native to cool regions of North America, Asia, and Europe. The plant thrives in mountainous regions and rocky soil. It grows ab...
crakow (shoe)
long, pointed, spiked shoe worn by both men and women first in the mid-14th century and then condemned by law. Crakows were named after the city of Kraków (Cracow), Pol., and they were also known as poulaines (Polish). Crakows were admired on the feet of the courtiers of Anne of Bohemia, who married Richard II of England. The exaggerated toes were imitated even in armour....
Cram, Donald J. (American chemist)
American chemist who, along with Charles J. Pedersen and Jean-Marie Lehn, was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his creation of molecules that mimic the chemical behaviour of molecules found in living systems....
Cram, Donald James (American chemist)
American chemist who, along with Charles J. Pedersen and Jean-Marie Lehn, was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his creation of molecules that mimic the chemical behaviour of molecules found in living systems....
Cram, Ralph Adams (American architect and writer)
architect and writer, the foremost Gothic revival architect in the United States....
Crambe maritima (plant)
(Crambe maritima), cabbagelike perennial plant in a genus of about 20 species in the mustard family (Brassicaceae), native to seashores and cliffs of Eurasia. Young or blanched leaves are cooked and eaten. The waxy, blue-green, coarsely toothed l...
Crambidae (insect)
...or wasp nests; larvae of the large subfamily Phycitinae have very diverse habits, including predation on scale insects.Family Crambidae (webworms)Approximately 11,600 species worldwide; small, often abundant moths, many larvae producing silk webbing in feeding sites; subfamily Crambinae contains a...
crambo (word game)
a game in which one player gave a word or line of verse to be matched in rhyme by other players. Thus, one said, “I know a word that rhymes with bird.” A second asked, “Is it ridiculous?” “No, it is not absurd.” “Is it a part of speech?” “No, it is not a word.” This proceede...
Cramer, James Joseph (American television personality)
American television personality known for his investment-advice show Mad Money (2005– )....
Cramer, Jim (American television personality)
American television personality known for his investment-advice show Mad Money (2005– )....
Cramer, Johann Baptist (British pianist)
one of the leading pianists of the period of transition from Classicism to Romanticism, composer, and founder (1824) of the London music publishing firm Cramer & Company....
Cramer’s rule (mathematics)
in linear and multilinear algebra, procedure for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations by means of determinants (see also determinant; linear equation). Although Cramer’s rule is not an effective meth...
Cramlington (England, United Kingdom)
town, administrative and historic county of Northumberland, Eng. It lies north-northeast of Newcastle upon Tyne on the northern edge of the Tyne and Wear (Tyneside) metropolitan area...
cramp (physiology)
painful, involuntary, and sustained contraction of muscle, most common in the limbs but also affecting certain internal organs. Examples of cramping include menstrual cramps and spasms of the circular muscles of the bowel (irritable colon), blood vessels (vasospasm), and pylorus of the stomach (pylorospasm...
crampfish (fish)
any of the rays of the families Torpedinidae, Narkidae, Narcinidae, and Hypnidae, named for their ability to produce electrical shocks. They are found worldwide in warm and temperate waters....
crampons (climbing equipment)
...of a shaft and a spike at the other, it is used for cutting steps in ice, probing crevasses, obtaining direct aid on steep slopes, achieving balance as necessary, and securing the rope (belaying). Crampons (sets of spikes that can be strapped on boot soles) are intended to preclude slipping and are useful on steep slopes of snow and ice and in steps that have been cut. By biting into the......
Cramps, The (American rock band)
Chilton embarked on a solo career in the late 1970s, and he worked as a producer, recording the first single for the “psychobilly” (a fusion of punk and rockabilly) group the Cramps. Chilton’s solo albums, which included Like Flies on Sherbert (1979) and High Priest (1987), met with mixed reviews, and the legacy of Bi...
CRAMRA (New Zealand [1988])
...political concerns over the commercial exploration and eventual development of such resources if found led, after six years of arduous negotiations, to the June 1988 signing in New Zealand of a new Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA), also known as the Wellington Convention, by the representatives of 33 nations. CRAMRA was designed to manage the......
Cranach, Lucas, the Elder (German painter)
leading painter of Saxony, and one of the most important and influential artists in 16th-century German art. Among his vast output of paintings and woodcuts, the most important are altarpieces, court portraits and portraits of the Protestant Reformers, and innumerable pictures of women—elongated female nudes and fashionably dressed ladies with titles from the Bible or mythology....
Cranach, Lucas, the Younger (German painter)
...in 1515. All works, even those that had issued from his large workshop or studio (in which he often employed 10 or more assistants), henceforth carried this device, which was also used by his son Lucas the Younger, until the latter’s death in 1586. This gave rise to many problems of attribution that still remain unsolved. The fact that so few works bear any date further complicates the.....
Cranach Press (German press)
...like the Doves Press, rejected ornament (except for initials) and relied upon carefully chosen types and painstaking presswork to make its effect. The most cosmopolitan of the German presses was the Cranach, conducted at Weimar by Count Harry Kessler. It produced editions of the classics and of German and English literature illustrated by artists such as Aristide Maillol, Eric Gill, and Gordon....