language: Grammar: …to language than sounds, and words are not to be regarded as merely sequences of syllables. The concept of the word is a grammatical concept; in speech, words are not separated by pauses, but they are recognized as recurrent units that make up sentences. Very generally, grammar is concerned with…

accent: Word accent (also called word stress, or lexical stress) is part of the characteristic way in which a language is pronounced. Given a particular language system, word accent may be fixed, or predictable (e.g., in French, where it occurs regularly at the end of words,…

epistemology: Commonsense philosophy, logical positivism, and naturalized epistemology: In a later work, Word and Object (1960), Quine developed a doctrine known as naturalized epistemology. According to that view, epistemology has no normative function. That is, it does not tell people what they ought to believe. Instead, its only legitimate role is to describe the way knowledge, especially…

derivation, in descriptive linguistics and traditional grammar, the formation of a word by changing the form of the base or by adding affixes to it (e.g., “hope” to “hopeful”). It is a major source of new words in a language. In historical linguistics, the derivation of a word is its history, or

puzzle: Puzzle genres: Word puzzles, which use a play of words or language to challenge the solver, cover a large range of puzzle types, from crosswords to riddles to word search puzzles. The popular television game show Wheel of Fortune is centred on a word puzzle. Boggle, Scrabble,…

dictionary: Establishment of the word list: The goal of the big dictionaries is to make a complete inventory of a language, recording every word that can be found. The obsolete and archaic words must be included from the earlier stages of the language and even the words attested to…

Jaco Pastorius: Weather Report, Word of Mouth, and notable collaborations: …with Weather Report, Pastorius formed Word of Mouth, a powerhouse jazz fusion ensemble whose core members included Hancock on keys, Toots Thielemans on harmonica, Michael Brecker and Weather Report bandmate Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Peter Erskine and Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Don Alias on percussion. Various other musicians

language: Structural, or grammatical, meaning: …in meaning because the different word orders distinguish what are conventionally called subject and object. In Latin the two corresponding sentences would be distinguished not by word order, which is grammatically indifferent and largely a matter of style, but by different shapes in the lexical equivalents of dog and cat.…

word processing, operation in which a text-editing software program called a word processor is used to create a document on a computer. A word-processing system can produce a wide variety of documents, including letters, memoranda, and manuals, rapidly and at relatively low cost. The precursor of

word processor, computer program used to write and revise documents, compose the layout of the text, and preview on a computer monitor how the printed copy will appear. The last capability is known as “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG; pronounced wi-zē-wig). Word processors facilitate writing

puzzle: Puzzle genres: Word puzzles, which use a play of words or language to challenge the solver, cover a large range of puzzle types, from crosswords to riddles to word search puzzles. The popular television game show Wheel of Fortune is centred on a word puzzle. Boggle, Scrabble,…

human nervous system: Language: …sometimes neologisms and senseless “word salad.” The entire posterior language area extends into the parietal lobe and is connected to the Broca area by a fiber tract called the arcuate fasciculus. Damage to this tract may result in conduction aphasia, a disorder in which the individual can understand and…

vocabulary, inventory of words used by a particular person or group or the words in a particular language or field of knowledge. The term comes from the Latin vocabulum, meaning designation or name. There are two types of vocabulary: active and passive. Active vocabulary includes the words an

accent: Word accent (also called word stress, or lexical stress) is part of the characteristic way in which a language is pronounced. Given a particular language system, word accent may be fixed, or predictable (e.g., in French, where it occurs regularly at the end of words,…

Russian literature: The Second South Slavic Influence: Known as “word weaving,” this ornamental style played with phonic and semantic correspondences. It appears in the most notable hagiography of the period, Zhitiye svyatogo Sergiya Radonezhskogo (“Life of Saint Sergius of Radonezh”) by Epifany Premudry (Epiphanius the Wise; d. between 1418 and 1422).

Chinese languages: Pre-Classical characters: Logographic (i.e., marked by a letter, symbol, or sign used to represent an entire word) is the term that best describes the nature of the Chinese writing system.

liturgy of the Word, the first of the two principal rites of the mass, the central act of worship of the Roman Catholic Church, the second being the liturgy of the Eucharist (see also Eucharist). The liturgy of the Word typically consists of three readings, the first from the Old Testament (Hebrew

Carl Theodor Dreyer: …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 ambiguous story of a hardworking, down-to-earth farm family who are burdened by the younger son’s insane delusion that he is Christ.…

Kaj Munk: …a success, and Ordet (1932; The Word), a miracle play set among Jutland peasants, established him as Denmark’s leading dramatist. Ordet later was made into a motion picture by the Danish director Carl Dryer. For his principal character, Munk often chose a dictator, or “strong man,” whom he showed struggling…

personality assessment: Word-association techniques: The list of projective approaches to personality assessment is long, one of the most venerable being the so-called word-association test. Jung used associations to groups of related words as a basis for inferring personality traits (e.g., the inferiority “complex”). Administering a word-association test…

Lucian: …claptrap and impudence, while in Word-Flaunter he attacks a contemporary rhetorician who is excessively fond of using an archaic and recondite vocabulary.

Wynkyn de Worde was an Alsatian-born printer in London, an astute businessman who published a large number of books (at least 600 titles from 1501). He was also the first printer in England to use italic type (1524). He was employed at William Caxton’s press, Westminster (the first printing

Al Worden was a U.S. astronaut, pilot of the command module Endeavour on the Apollo 15 mission (July 26–August 7, 1971). Worden graduated in 1955 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and he earned M.S. degrees in astronautical and aeronautical engineering and in instrumentation

Al Worden was a U.S. astronaut, pilot of the command module Endeavour on the Apollo 15 mission (July 26–August 7, 1971). Worden graduated in 1955 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and he earned M.S. degrees in astronautical and aeronautical engineering and in instrumentation

Al Worden was a U.S. astronaut, pilot of the command module Endeavour on the Apollo 15 mission (July 26–August 7, 1971). Worden graduated in 1955 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and he earned M.S. degrees in astronautical and aeronautical engineering and in instrumentation

John L. Worden was a U.S. naval officer who commanded the Union warship Monitor against the Confederate Virginia (formerly Merrimack) in the first battle between ironclads (March 9, 1862) in the American Civil War (1861–65). Appointed a midshipman in 1834, Worden received his early naval training

John L. Worden was a U.S. naval officer who commanded the Union warship Monitor against the Confederate Virginia (formerly Merrimack) in the first battle between ironclads (March 9, 1862) in the American Civil War (1861–65). Appointed a midshipman in 1834, Worden received his early naval training

Wordian Stage, second of three stages of the Middle Permian (Guadalupian) Series, made up of all rocks deposited during the Wordian Age (268.8 million to 265.1 million years ago) of the Permian Period. The name of this interval is derived from the Wordian Formation located in the Glass Mountains of

• Do you start with the same word every day, or do you vary your opening words? • How long is your streak? • Have you ever solved it in one? If those questions confound you, then you probably are not a regular player of Wordle, a popular web-based word game in which users have six tries to guess a

George A. Miller: …1980s Miller helped to develop WordNet, a sizable online database of English words that displayed semantic and lexical relationships between sets of synonymous terms. Designed to simulate the organization of human verbal memory, WordNet was a widely used linguistic research tool.

Microsoft Word: …was in direct competition with WordPerfect and WordStar, both of which were introduced for PCs in 1982.

WordPress, content management system (CMS) developed in 2003 by American blogger Matt Mullenweg and British blogger Mike Little. WordPress is most often used to create blogs, but the program is sufficiently flexible that it can be used to create and design any sort of website. It is also an

Gabriel Josipovici: The first three—The Inventory (1968), Words (1971), and The Present (1975)—were written mostly in dialogue, whereas Migrations (1977) and The Air We Breathe (1981) were composed of a series of images and sound patterns following a loosely narrative form.

Jimmy Webb: Later hits and works: …his solo albums, which include Words and Music (1970), Letters (1972), El Mirage (1977), and others. Several songs from his solo albums had greater commercial success when recorded by other artists.

Norman Taurog: Musical comedies and Boys Town: More successful was Words and Music (1948), which had Tom Drake and Rooney playing famed composers Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, respectively. The musical featured a number of songs performed by such stars as Garland and Lena Horne, the best of which was arguably Gene Kelly’s “Slaughter on…

Juliette Binoche: …rheumatoid arthritis in the romance Words and Pictures (2013); the film featured scenes of her painting in real time, showcasing her skills as an artist.

Steven Pinker: In Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (1999) Pinker offered an analysis of the cognitive mechanisms that make language possible. Exhibiting a lively sense of humour and a talent for explaining difficult scientific concepts clearly, he argued that the phenomenon of language depended essentially on…

Larry Woiwode: …wrote several essay collections, including Words for Readers and Writers (2013), and a children’s book, The Invention of Lefse (2011). He also wrote several biographies, including A Legacy of Passion (2022), about the Scheel family, founders of a retail chain. What I Think I Did (2000) and A Step from…

Fay Weldon: … (1978) and the stage plays Words of Advice (1974) and Action Replay (1979).

Julio Ramón Ribeyro: …three, 1977; and four, 1992; Words of the Mute). In spite of the pathetic lives of the characters he depicts, Ribeyro’s narrators maintain a critical distance, as if depicting things. The characters themselves appear not to understand, much less be able to articulate, their predicament. In Featherless Buzzards, two boys…

Philip Glass: His 2015 memoir Words Without Music chronicles his colourful life in piquant detail.

Jeremy Irons: (2008), Margin Call (2011), The Words (2012), Race (2016), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and Justice League (2017); a different cut of the latter film was released in 2021 as Zach Snyder’s Justice League. He also costarred as mathematician G.H. Hardy in the Srinivasa Ramanujan biopic

Jean-Paul Sartre: Early life and writings: …brilliant autobiography, Les Mots (1963; Words), narrates the adventures of the mother and child in the park as they went from group to group—in the vain hope of being accepted—then finally retreated to the sixth floor of their apartment “on the heights where (the) dreams dwell.” “The words” saved the…

Futurism: Literature: …genres, the most significant being parole in libertà (“words-in-freedom”), also referred to as free-word poetry. It was poetry liberated from the constraints of linear typography and conventional syntax and spelling. A brief extract from Marinetti’s war poem “Battaglia peso + odore” (1912; “Battle Weight + Smell”) was appended to one…

Dorothy Wordsworth was an English prose writer whose Alfoxden Journal 1798 and Grasmere Journals 1800–03 are remarkable for the imaginative power of their description of nature. Her journals also shed significant light on her brother, the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, whose own work was

William Wordsworth was an English poet whose Lyrical Ballads (1798), written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the English Romantic movement. The principles he outlines in the preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) were revolutionary. By seeking to compose poetry that

India: The early Congress movement: …president of the Congress, and William Wordsworth, principal of Elphinstone College, both appeared as observers. Most Britons in India, however, either ignored the Congress Party and its resolutions as the action and demands of a “microscopic minority” of India’s diverse millions or considered them the rantings of disloyal extremists. Despite…

Sebastian Klonowic: Worek Judaszów (1600; “Judas’s Sack”), also in Polish, is a satiric and didactic work on the low life of Lublin. In the satirical and didactic Latin poem Victoria deorum (1587; “The Victory of the Gods”) Klonowic contends that true nobility depends not upon birth but…

work, in physics, measure of energy transfer that occurs when an object is moved over a distance by an external force at least part of which is applied in the direction of the displacement. If the force is constant, work may be computed by multiplying the length of the path by the component of the

Work, the most elaborate and best-known painting by English artist Ford Madox Brown, created between 1852 and 1865. Brown provided inspiration for the young artists who founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and, in turn, was influenced by their ideals. This painting demonstrates his close links

work, in economics and sociology, the activities and labour necessary to the survival of society. What follows is a brief overview of work. For a discussion of the methods by which society structures the activities and labour necessary to its survival, see the history of the organization of work.

workaholism, compulsive desire to work. Workaholism is defined in various ways. In general, however, it is characterized by working excessive hours (beyond workplace or financial requirements), by thinking continually about work, and by a lack of work enjoyment, which are unrelated to actual

Rosabeth Moss Kanter: Her other books included Work and Family in the USA: Critical Review and Research and Policy Agenda (1977), World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy (1995), Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the Frontiers of Management (1997), Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead (2015), and Think Outside the…

African dance: Work dances: Men who work together often celebrate a successful project with beer drinking and vigorous dances expressing their occupational skills. In Nigeria, Nupe fishermen are renowned for their net throwing, which they formalize into dance patterns, and young Irigwe farmers on the Jos Plateau…

Protestant ethic, in sociological theory, the value attached to hard work, thrift, and efficiency in one’s worldly calling, which, especially in the Calvinist view, were deemed signs of an individual’s election, or eternal salvation. German sociologist Max Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the

labour, in economics, the general body of wage earners. It is in this sense, for example, that one speaks of “organized labour.” In a more special and technical sense, however, labour means any valuable service rendered by a human agent in the production of wealth, other than accumulating and

electronic work function, energy (or work) required to withdraw an electron completely from a metal surface. This energy is a measure of how tightly a particular metal holds its electrons—that is, of how much lower the electron’s energy is when present within the metal than when completely free.

work hardening, in metallurgy, increase in hardness of a metal induced, deliberately or accidentally, by hammering, rolling, drawing, or other physical processes. Although the first few deformations imposed on metal by such treatment weaken it, its strength is increased by continued deformations.

James Martin: Other roles, projects, and books: His autobiography, Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest, was published in 2026.

workers’ compensation, social welfare program through which employers bear some of the cost of their employees’ work-related injuries and occupational diseases. Workers’ compensation was first introduced in Germany in 1884, and by the middle of the 20th century most countries in the world had some

Sabrina Carpenter: Childhood and early career: …starred in the Netflix film Work It, which she executive produced in addition to appearing on the soundtrack.

Missy Elliott: …a third Grammy for “Work It,” a single from her 2002 album Under Construction. Her fifth studio album, This Is Not a Test! (2003), included features by rappers Jay-Z and Nelly as well as an appearance by Mary J. Blige, but it did not produce hits as her others…

aesthetics: Marxist aesthetics: …Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1936; The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) attempts to describe the changed experience of art in the modern world and sees the rise of Fascism and mass society as the culmination of a process of debasement, whereby art ceases to be a…

motion-picture technology: Picture editing: …from these copies, known as work prints, so that the original camera footage can remain undamaged and clean until the final negative cut. The work prints reproduce not only the footage shot but also the edge numbers that were photographically imprinted on the raw film stock. These latent edge numbers,…

Works Progress Administration (WPA), work program for the unemployed that was created in 1935 under U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Although critics called the WPA an extension of the dole or a device for creating a huge patronage army loyal to the Democratic Party, the stated purpose

work song, any song that belongs to either of two broad categories: songs used as a rhythmic accompaniment to a task and songs used to make a statement about work. Used by workers of innumerable occupations worldwide, work songs range from the simple hum of a solitary labourer to politically and

The Four-Day Workweek: …farms for the factory, where working hours were set not by nature but by employers. The rise of mass production and the assembly line only exacerbated these workplace changes, often to the detriment of the worker.

Hank Ballard: “Work with Me Annie”—which prompted a raft of answer songs, most notably “Roll with Me Henry” by Etta James—was opposed by radio programmers who disapproved of its “explicit lyrics.” However, it and the similarly criticized “Sexy Ways,” “Annie Had a Baby,” and “Annie’s Aunt Fannie”…

history of the organization of work, history of the methods by which society structures the activities and labour necessary to its survival. Work is essential in providing the basic physical needs of food, clothing, and shelter. But work involves more than the use of tools and techniques. Advances

H.G. Wells: Middle and late works: …by his second wife), and The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind (1932). At the same time he continued to publish works of fiction, in which his gifts of narrative and dialogue give way almost entirely to polemics. His sense of humour reappears, however, in the reminiscences of his Experiment…

repetitive strain injury (RSI), any of a broad range of conditions affecting muscles, tendons, tendon sheaths, nerves, or joints that result particularly from excessive and forceful use. Strain, rapid movement, or constrained or constricted posture may be other causes. Examples of repetitive strain

Martha McChesney Berry: …a day in a pioneering work-study program; the experience of work would supplement their vocational training.

Gary Plan, an educational system instituted in 1907 in Gary, Indiana. It was part of the larger scientific management movement in the early part of the 20th century that tried to increase efficiency in manufacturing through increased separation of worker roles and duties as well as through

Louisa May Alcott: Work: A Story of Experience (1873), based on Alcott’s own struggles, tells the story of a poor girl trying to support herself by a succession of menial jobs. The Gothic tales and thrillers that Alcott published pseudonymously between 1863 and 1869 were collected and republished…

monopoly and competition: Workable competition: Since the market performance of industries varies along with their market characteristics, efforts have been made to devise some practical standard for identifying the sorts of market structure that engender socially satisfactory performance in a given industry. The term workable…

workaholism, compulsive desire to work. Workaholism is defined in various ways. In general, however, it is characterized by working excessive hours (beyond workplace or financial requirements), by thinking continually about work, and by a lack of work enjoyment, which are unrelated to actual

hand tool: Workbench and vise: The workbench and vise form an organic unit, for the vise is a fixture that is either part of the carpenter’s bench or is attached to the machinist’s bench.

ant: Natural history: …a colony: queens, males, and workers. Male ants play no part in everyday nest activities. They live only for a short time, occur in limited numbers, and are virtual parasites of the colony, which must feed them. The fertile female, the queen, performs only one task: egg laying. The life…

beekeeping: Worker bees: Worker bees live about six weeks during the active season but may live for several months if they emerge as adults in the fall and spend the winter in the cluster. As the name implies, worker bees do all the work of the…

De Stijl: The Worker’s Housing Estate in Hoek van Holland (1924–27), designed by Oud, expresses the same clarity, austerity, and order found in a Mondrian painting. Gerrit Rietveld, another architect associated with De Stijl, also applied its stylistic principles in his work; the Schröder House in Utrecht (1924),…

Vietnam: Political process: …and 1992 constitutions institutionalized the Vietnamese Communist Party as the sole source of leadership for the state and society. The 1992 document, however, delegated much more authority to the president and to the cabinet; they were given the task of running the government, while the party became responsible for overall…

Hungary: Political developments: …join them in a single Workers’ Party, from which recalcitrants were expelled.

Daily Worker, newspaper that, under a variety of names, has generally reflected the views of the Communist Party of the United States. The Daily Worker, its origins traceable to the 1920s, was variously the organ and the “semiofficial” voice of the party, and its readers across the middle of the

worker-priest, in the Roman Catholic church, member of a movement, especially in France and Belgium after World War II, seeking to reach the working classes, who had become largely alienated from the church. The worker-priests set aside their clerical garb and left their clerical dwellings to take

Sebastião Salgado: Mature work: That same year he published Workers, an epic portrait of the working class. Four years later Terra: Struggle of the Landless received tremendous critical acclaim. The collection of black-and-white photographs taken between 1980 and 1996 documents the plight of impoverished workers in Brazil; the work includes a preface by Portuguese…

Friedrich Ebert: …derived its authority from the Workers and Soldiers Council, which claimed to speak for Germany and the German Republic but in truth had been elected rather arbitrarily by the factories and regiments of Berlin alone. Ebert was determined to place the power of the Council of People’s Representatives and the…

George Gissing: The first of these, Workers in the Dawn, appeared in 1880, to be followed by 21 others. Between 1886 and 1895 he published one or more novels every year. He also wrote Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1898), a perceptive piece of literary criticism.

Itzhak Ben-Zvi: …to the formation of the Poale Zion World Federation in 1907. He settled in Palestine and in 1908 helped found ha-Shomer, a self-defense organization for Jewish agricultural settlements. In 1909 he founded in Jerusalem the first Hebrew high school in Palestine.

Communist Party of the United States of America: …create the legal and aboveground Workers Party of America (WPA). When the United Toilers of America, a group that adopted the same tactics as the WPA, combined with the latter organization, the party renamed itself the Workers (Communist) Party, finally settling on the name Communist Party of the United States…

adult education: Adult-education agencies and institutions: …by such organizations as “workers’ academies” in Finland, “people’s high schools” in Germany and Austria, “adult education centres” in Great Britain, and “people’s universities” in The Netherlands, Italy, and Switzerland. The distinguishing characteristics of these institutions are that they

Vladimir Lenin: Saving the Revolution: …guided the strategy of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, commanded by Trotsky. Although the economy had collapsed, he managed to mobilize sufficient resources to sustain the Red Army and the industrial workers. But above all it was his political leadership that saved the day for the Soviets. By proclaiming…

Izvestiya: …as an organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. After the October Revolution that year, control of Izvestiya passed from the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries into the hands of the Bolsheviks, and the paper’s main offices were moved to Moscow. Izvestiya grew rapidly to a circulation of…

Spain: Labor and taxation: …and the Workers’ Commissions (Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras; CC.OO.), which is affiliated with the Communist Party and is also structured by sectional and territorial divisions. Other unions include the Workers’ Syndical Union (Unión Sindical Obrera; USO), which has a strong Roman Catholic orientation; the Independent Syndicate of Civil…

workers’ compensation, social welfare program through which employers bear some of the cost of their employees’ work-related injuries and occupational diseases. Workers’ compensation was first introduced in Germany in 1884, and by the middle of the 20th century most countries in the world had some

Guild Socialism: …a movement that called for workers’ control of industry through a system of national guilds operating in an implied contractual relationship with the public. The Guild Socialist movement developed in England and had its main impact there in the first two decades of the 20th century.

economic planning: Yugoslavia: …state-owned enterprises was given to workers’ councils that would decide their own production programs according to profitability, with prices subject to negotiation. Investments were partly controlled by the enterprises themselves out of profits or by the central planners, partly financed from bank credits. But lack of effective central control, and…

May Day, day commemorating the historic struggles and gains made by workers and the labor movement, also called International Workers’ Day. May Day is observed on May 1 in many countries and is a public holiday in countries including India, South Africa, China, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and

Poland: Communist Poland: A Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) arose and sought to bridge the gap between the intelligentsia, which had been isolated in 1968, and the workers, who had received no support in 1970. The names of such dissidents as Jacek Kuroń and Adam Michnik became internationally known. Other…

Albert Mansbridge: …the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA; originally called An Association to Promote the Higher Education of Working Men). The WEA was quickly recognized by most British universities, and in 1905 Mansbridge abandoned clerical work to become its full-time general secretary.

Léon Jouhaux: …and established in 1948 the Force Ouvrière (“Workers’ Force”), which stood between the communists and Roman Catholic labour organizations. In 1949 he helped to found the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and in 1951 he received the Nobel Peace Prize.