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  • Fall, Aminata Sow (Senegalese author)
    ...writers in a hitherto male world were Mariama Bâ, recipient of the first Noma Award for publishing in Africa for Une Si Longue Lettre (1980; So Long a Letter), and Aminata Sow Fall, a fellow Senegalese, who earned praise for La Grève des battu ou les déchets humains (1979; The Beggar’s Strike), an ironic novella of ...
  • fall cankerworm (insect)
    ...rear up to meet it. The larvae resemble twigs or leaf stems, feed on foliage, and often seriously damage or destroy trees and crops. The spring cankerworm (species Paleacrita vernata) and the fall cankerworm (Alsophila pometaria) attack fruit and shade trees, skeletonizing the leaves and spinning threads between the branches. Pupation usually occurs in the soil without a cocoon......
  • Fall Classic (baseball championship)
    in baseball, a postseason play-off series between champions of the two major professional baseball leagues of the United States: the American League (AL) and the National League (NL)....
  • Fall complex (religion)
    ...may be brought about by theft of a divine property (e.g., the stealing of fire or grain by a culture hero), which, if viewed as an evil act, regards the human condition as punishment (the Fall complex). In other traditions, man is defined as a clever thief, and the human condition and culture is perceived as the seizing of an opportunity (the Prometheus or trickster complex). Another......
  • fall herring (fish)
    The gizzard shads (Dorosoma), of both marine waters and freshwaters, have a muscular stomach and filamentous last dorsal fin rays. The Atlantic species (D. cepedianum), also called hickory shad and fall herring, ranges through the southern United States. Others are found in the Indo-Pacific and Australian waters. None is of particular economic value. ...
  • fall line (geology)
    line of numerous waterfalls, as at the edge of a plateau, where streams pass from resistant rocks to a plain of weak ones below. Such a line also marks the head of navigation, or the inland limit that ships can reach from a river’s mouth; because navigation is interrupted both upstream and downstream, important cities often occur along the fall line. In the eastern United States, a fall li...
  • “Fall Maurizius, Der” (work by Wassermann)
    Perhaps Wassermann’s most enduring work is Der Fall Maurizius (1928; The Maurizius Case), which treats the theme of justice with the carefully plotted suspense of a detective story. It introduced the character Etzel Andergast, whose questioning of the judgment of his cold-hearted jurist father and whose own detective work eventually prove the innocence of a man his father had....
  • Fall of a Nation, The (film)
    ...Hearts of Erin (1917). His operetta music was superbly orchestrated. He also wrote two grand operas, Natoma (1911) and Madeleine (1914), and the music for the motion picture The Fall of a Nation (1916), probably the first original symphonic score composed for a feature film. Late in life he wrote for revues, notably the Ziegfeld Follies....
  • Fall of Man (religion)
    ...alone, God created other animals but, finding these insufficient, put Adam to sleep, took from him a rib, and created a new companion, Eve. The two were persons of innocence until Eve yielded to the temptations of the evil serpent and Adam joined her in eating the forbidden fruit, whereupon they both recognized their nakedness and donned fig leaves as garments. Immediately, God recognized their...
  • Fall of the Giants (painting by Longhi)
    ...he received his first training. Later he worked under the Veronese historical painter Antonio Balestra, but his one important work of this sort, the monumental ceiling of the Fall of the Giants (completed 1734) for the Palazzo Sagredo, was an artistic and critical failure. It is likely that because of this he left Venice for a time and studied at Bologna under the.....
  • Fall of the House of Usher, The (work by Poe)
    ...Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia. There a contract for a monthly feature stimulated him to write William Wilson and The Fall of the House of Usher, stories of supernatural horror. The latter contains a study of a neurotic now known to have been an acquaintance of Poe, not Poe himself....
  • Fall of the Rebelling Angels (fresco by Tiepolo)
    ...decoration was commissioned by Dionisio Dolfin, the patriarch of the town of Aquileia, and Tiepolo probably began work with the ceiling above the main staircase, depicting the Fall of the Rebelling Angels in vigorous, dramatic forms; in the gallery, within the Baroque perspective framings of Mengozzi Colonna, his faithful collaborator, he narrated biblical episodes.....
  • Fall River (Massachusetts, United States)
    city, Bristol county, southeastern Massachusetts, U.S. It lies on the east shore of Mount Hope Bay, at the mouth of the Taunton River, 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Providence, Rhode Island. Its site was included in Freeman’s Purchase, a tract of land bought from Native Americans in 1659 by Plymouth colonists and settled in 1686. Originally part of Free...
  • Fall, The (novel by Camus)
    ...Rebel), which provoked bitter antagonism among Marxist critics and such near-Marxist theoreticians as Jean-Paul Sartre. His other major literary works are the technically brilliant novel La Chute (1956) and a collection of short stories, L’Exil et le royaume (1957; Exile and the Kingdom). La Chute reveals a preoccupation with Christian symbolism and con...
  • fall webworm (insect)
    The fall webworm (Hyphantria cunea) is a serious pest whose caterpillars construct webs over the leaves at the end of branches. Sometimes large areas are covered with silken sheets. They pupate above ground in cocoons made of larval hairs and silk. These silken webs can be distinguished from those of the tent caterpillars, as the latter construct silken retreats in branch forks deep......
  • fall wind (air current)
    When a katabatic wind is warmed by compression during its descent into denser air, it is called a foehn. A large-scale katabatic wind that descends too rapidly to warm up is called a fall wind. In areas where fall winds occur, homes and orchards are situated on hillslopes above the lowlands where the cold air accumulates....
  • Falla, Manuel de (Spanish composer)
    the most distinguished Spanish composer of the early 20th century. In his music he achieved a fusion of poetry, asceticism, and ardour that represents the spirit of Spain at its purest....
  • Fallaci, Oriana (Italian journalist, author, and historian)
    Italian journalist and war correspondent (b. June 29, 1929, Florence, Italy—d. Sept. 15, 2006, Florence), earned international iconic status for her passionate, opinionated writing and for her in-depth, often adversarial interviews with such prominent world figures as Indira Gandhi, Henry Kissinger, Deng Xiaoping, and both the shah of Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini. Fallaci dropped out of medi...
  • Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost (article by Knight)
    Another of Knight’s important contributions to economics was his 1924 article “Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost,” in which he challenged A.C. Pigou’s view that traffic congestion justified the taxation of roads. If roads were privately owned, wrote Knight, then the profits realized from roadway tolls would help reduce congestion and thereby make government...
  • fallacy (logic)
    in logic, erroneous reasoning that has the appearance of soundness. Among numerous types of logical fallacies that have been noted, some of the better known are: post hoc ergo propter hoc (“after this, therefore, because of this”), in which something is assumed to be the cause of something else merely because it was antecedent in time; ad hominem (“against the m...
  • fallacy of accident (logic)
    The classification that is still widely used is that of Aristotle’s Sophistic Refutations: (1) The fallacy of accident is committed by an argument that applies a general rule to a particular case in which some special circumstance (“accident”) makes the rule inapplicable. The truth that “men are capable of seeing” is no basis for the conclusion th...
  • fallacy of composition (logic)
    ...arising when a statement can bear distinct meanings depending on which word is stressed (example: “Men are considered equal.” “Men are considered equal.”). (4) Composition occurs when the premise that the parts of a whole are of a certain nature is improperly used to infer that the whole itself must also be of this nature (example: a story made up of go...
  • fallacy of division (logic)
    ...of a whole are of a certain nature is improperly used to infer that the whole itself must also be of this nature (example: a story made up of good paragraphs is thus said to be a good story). (5) Division—the reverse of composition—occurs when the premise that a collective whole has a certain nature is improperly used to infer that a part of this whole must also be of this nature....
  • fallacy of false cause (logic)
    ...from p as a premise to p as conclusion is not deductively invalid but lacks any power of conviction, since no one who questioned the conclusion could concede the premise. (5) The fallacy of false cause (non causa pro causa) mislocates the cause of one phenomenon in another that is only seemingly related. The most common version of this fallacy, called post hoc ergo......
  • fallacy of illicit major premise (logic)
    ...he had a social conscience; hence, Amos was a prophet”). Most of the traditionally considered formal fallacies, however, relate to the syllogism. One example may be cited, that of the fallacy of illicit major (or minor) premise, which violates the rules for “distribution.” (A term is said to be distributed when reference is made to all members of the class. For......
  • fallacy of illicit minor premise (logic)
    ...is made to all members of the class. For example, in “Some crows are not friendly,” reference is made to all friendly things but not to all crows.) The fallacy arises when a major (or minor) term that is undistributed in the premise is distributed in the conclusion (example: “All tubers are high-starch foods [undistributed]; no squashes are tubers; therefore, no squashes ar...
  • fallacy of irrelevant conclusion (logic)
    ...of accident argues improperly from a special case to a general rule. Thus, the fact that a certain drug is beneficial to some sick persons does not imply that it is beneficial to all people. (3) The fallacy of irrelevant conclusion is committed when the conclusion changes the point that is at issue in the premises. Special cases of irrelevant conclusion are presented by the so-called fallacies....
  • fallacy of many questions (logic)
    ...Williams is not a philosopher. Indeed, one might even take A as evidence for the falsity of either P1 or P2 or as evidence that Williams is not really a philosopher. (6) The fallacy of many questions (plurimum interrogationum) consists in demanding or giving a single answer to a question when this answer could either be divided (example: “Do you like the......
  • fallacy of non sequitur (logic)
    ...yes nor no; but Ann yes and Mary no.”) or refused altogether, because a mistaken presupposition is involved (example: “Have you stopped beating your wife?”). (7) The fallacy of non sequitur (“it does not follow”) occurs when there is not even a deceptively plausible appearance of valid reasoning, because there is an obvious lack of connection between th...
  • fallacy of relevance (logic)
    ...(3) The fallacy of irrelevant conclusion is committed when the conclusion changes the point that is at issue in the premises. Special cases of irrelevant conclusion are presented by the so-called fallacies of relevance. These include ( a) the argument ad hominem (speaking “against the man” rather than to the issue), in which the premises may only make a personal......
  • fallacy of secundum quid (logic)
    ...are capable of seeing” is no basis for the conclusion that “blind men are capable of seeing.” This is a special case of the fallacy of secundum quid (more fully: a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, which means “from a saying [taken too] simply to a saying according to what [it really is]”—i.e., according to its truth as......
  • fallacy of the consequent (logic)
    Formal fallacies are deductively invalid arguments that typically commit an easily recognizable logical error. A classic case is Aristotle’s fallacy of the consequent, relating to reasoning from premises of the form “If p1, then p2.” The fallacy has two forms: (1) denial of the antecedent, in which one mistakenly argues from the premises ...
  • Fallas Festival (Spanish festival)
    Valencia’s renowned annual Fallas Festival commemorates St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, and draws thousands of spectators to the city each March. The fallas are towering monuments, effigies made of papier-mâché and wax (and sometimes cork and wood) that together create a scene. (Each individual figure is known as a ......
  • Fälldin, Thorbjörn (prime minister of Sweden)
    politician who was prime minister of Sweden (1976–78, 1979–82)....
  • Falle of Princis, The (work by Lydgate)
    ...lines of his verse survive. His only prose work, The Serpent of Division (1422), an account of Julius Caesar, is brief. His poems vary from vast narratives such as The Troy Book and The Falle of Princis to occasional poems of a few lines. Of the longer poems, one translated from the French, the allegory Reason and Sensuality (c. 1408) on the theme of chastity,...
  • Fallen Asleep While Young (work by Sillanpaa)
    ...country servant-girl. After several collections of short stories in the late 1920s, Sillanpää published his best-known, though not his most perfect, work, Nuorena nukkunut (1931; Fallen Asleep While Young, or The Maid Silja), a story of an old peasant family. Realistic and lyric elements are blended in Miehen tie (1932; Way of a Man), which descr...
  • “Fallen Leaves” (painting by Hishida)
    ...Japanese line drawing with a Western Impressionistic style (pejoratively known as mōrōtai, or “vague,” “indistinct”). Among his best-known works are “Ochiba” (1909; “Fallen Leaves”) and “Kuroi neko” (1910; “A Black Cat”)....
  • Fallen, The (work by Lehmbruck)
    ...of World War I Lehmbruck returned to Germany, where he worked in a hospital. His experiences with wounded and dying soldiers led him to create such poignant works as The Fallen (1915–16) and Seated Youth (1918), which indicate the artist’s state of utter depression. He committed suicide one year later. Although he was not...
  • Fallen Timbers, Battle of (United States history)
    (Aug. 20, 1794), decisive victory of the U.S. general Anthony Wayne over the Northwest Indian Confederation, ending two decades of border warfare and securing white settlement of the former Indian territory mainly in Ohio. Wayne’s expedition of more than 1,000 soldiers represented the third U.S. attempt (see Saint Clair’s Defeat...
  • “Fallen Woman, The” (opera by Verdi)
    ...not exclusively of women, may have developed out of his relationship with Strepponi. She is often evoked in connection with the sympathetic and radiant portrayal of Violetta in La traviata (The Fallen Woman—a rough analogy, to be sure, for Violetta the courtesan had fallen a great deal farther than Strepponi the singer). Yet Verdi......
  • fallenness (philosophy)
    ...(Entfremdung)—or, as expressed in terms more central to Heidegger’s thought, in a “highly inauthentic way of being.” Although fallenness, or inauthenticity, is an inescapable feature of human existence—i.e., it is an existential, and an essential, potentiality (Möglichkeit)...
  • Fallières, Armand (president of France)
    French statesman and eighth president of the French Third Republic....
  • Fallières, Clément-Armand (president of France)
    French statesman and eighth president of the French Third Republic....
  • Falling in Love Again (popular song)
    ...persona was carefully crafted, and her films (with few exceptions) were skillfully executed. Although her vocal range was not great, her memorable renditions of songs such as Falling in Love Again, Lili Marleen, La Vie en rose, and Give Me the Man made them classics of an era. Her many......
  • falling intonation (speech)
    The Thai tones are as follows: level (using no diacritic), low (using a grave accent), falling (using a circumflex), high (using an acute accent), and rising (using a wedge, or haček); for example, maa (with no diacritic) ‘to come,’ màak (with a grave accent) ‘areca nut,’ mâak (with a circumflex) ‘much,’ m...
  • Falling Man (work by DeLillo)
    ...the second half of the 20th century by tracing the journeys of a baseball, as well as Cosmopolis (2003), set largely in a billionaire’s limousine as it moves across Manhattan, and Falling Man (2007), which tells the story of a survivor of the September 11 attacks in 2001....
  • Falling Slowly (song by Hansard and Irglova)
    ...(set direction) for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet StreetOriginal Score: Dario Marianelli for AtonementOriginal Song: Falling Slowly from Once; music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa IrglovaAnimated Feature Film: Ratatouille, directed by......
  • falling star (astronomy)
    respectively, a glowing streak in the sky (meteor) and its cause, which is a relatively small stony or metallic natural object from space (meteoroid) that enters Earth’s atmosphere and heats to incandescence. In modern usage the term meteoroid, rather than being restricted to objects entering Earth’s atmosphere, is applied to any small object in orbit ...
  • falling tide (oceanography)
    seaward flow in estuaries or tidal rivers during a tidal phase of lowering water level. The reverse flow, occurring during rising tides, is called the flood tide. See tide. ...
  • falling-rate period (food technology)
    ...of drying, known as the constant-rate period, water is evaporated from the surface of the product and the temperature of the product remains constant. In the final stages of drying, known as the falling-rate period, the temperature of the product increases, causing water to move from the interior to the surface for evaporation....
  • Fallingwater (house, Bear Run waterfall, Mill Run, Pennsylvania, United States)
    ...when the national economy improved, two commissions came to him that he utilized magnificently. The first was for a weekend retreat near Pittsburgh in the Allegheny Mountains. This residence, Fallingwater, was cantilevered over a waterfall with a simple daring that evoked wide publicity from 1936 to the present. Probably Wright’s most-admired work, it was later given to the state and was...
  • “fallit, En” (work by Bjørnson)
    ...took up so much of his time that he left Norway in order to write. The two dramas that brought him an international reputation were thus written in self-imposed exile: En fallit (1875; The Bankrupt) and Redaktøren (1875; The Editor). Both fulfilled the then current demand on literature (stipulated by the Danish writer and critic Georg Brandes) to debate......
  • Fallon (Nevada, United States)
    city, seat (1902) of Churchill county, west-central Nevada, U.S. Fallon lies about 60 miles (100 km) east of Reno near the end of an arid valley called the 40-Mile Desert, much feared by early travelers along the Emigrant Trail. The Carson-Truckee Project (completed 1903) and Lahontan Dam (completed 1914), built on the Walker, Truckee, and Carson rivers, provided the reclamation...
  • Fallopia, Gabriello (Italian physician)
    the most illustrious of 16th-century Italian anatomists, who contributed greatly to early knowledge of the ear and of the reproductive organs....
  • fallopian tube (anatomy)
    either of a pair of long narrow ducts located in the human female abdominal cavity that transport the male sperm cells to the egg, provide a suitable environment for fertilization, and transport the egg from the ovary, where it is produced, to the central channel (lumen) of the uterus....
  • fallopian tube, ampulla of (anatomy)
    ...over the ovary; they contract close to the ovary’s surface during ovulation in order to guide the free egg. Leading from the infundibulum is the long central portion of the fallopian tube called the ampulla. The isthmus is a small region, only about 2 cm (0.8 inch) long, that connects the ampulla and infundibulum to the uterus. The final region of the fallopian tube, known as the intramu...
  • Fallopio, Gabriello (Italian physician)
    the most illustrious of 16th-century Italian anatomists, who contributed greatly to early knowledge of the ear and of the reproductive organs....
  • Fallopius, Gabriel (Italian physician)
    the most illustrious of 16th-century Italian anatomists, who contributed greatly to early knowledge of the ear and of the reproductive organs....
  • Fallot, Étienne-Louis-Arthur (French physician)
    ...and William Stokes; Austin Flint murmur, named for the American physician who discovered the disorder; and tetralogy of Fallot, a combination of congenital heart defects named for French physician Étienne-Louis-Arthur Fallot....
  • Fallot tetrad (congenital heart disease)
    combination of congenital heart defects characterized by hypoxic spells (which include difficulty in breathing and alterations in consciousness), a change in the shape of the fingertips (digital clubbing), heart murmur, and cyanosis, a bluish discoloration of the skin that gives rise to “blue baby” syndrome....
  • Fallot, tetralogy of (congenital heart disease)
    combination of congenital heart defects characterized by hypoxic spells (which include difficulty in breathing and alterations in consciousness), a change in the shape of the fingertips (digital clubbing), heart murmur, and cyanosis, a bluish discoloration of the skin that gives rise to “blue baby” syndrome....
  • Fallot’s tetralogy (congenital heart disease)
    combination of congenital heart defects characterized by hypoxic spells (which include difficulty in breathing and alterations in consciousness), a change in the shape of the fingertips (digital clubbing), heart murmur, and cyanosis, a bluish discoloration of the skin that gives rise to “blue baby” syndrome....
  • fallout (nuclear physics)
    deposition of radioactive materials on the Earth from the atmosphere. The terms rain out and snow out are sometimes used to specify such deposition during precipitant weather....
  • Falloux, Frédéric-Alfred-Pierre, comte de (French politician)
    French political figure and monarchist who served in various political roles but is best remembered as the sponsor of the important educational legislation known as the loi Falloux....
  • Falloux Law (French history [1850])
    ...seminary of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet (1837–45), he attracted many lay students. He was prominent in the struggle for educational freedom under the July Monarchy and was an architect of the Falloux Law (1850), which gave legal status to independent secondary schools. While bishop of Orléans (consecrated 1849), and as a member of the French Academy (elected 1854), he helped......
  • fallow deer (mammal)
    (Dama dama), medium-sized deer, family Cervidae (order Artiodactyla), commonly kept on estates and in parks and zoos. The fallow deer was probably native to the Mediterranean region and western Asia but has been introduced in many areas and now occurs wild in Europe and elsewhere. It often inhabits open woods; the females and young live in groups while the males remain apart except in the ...
  • fallow system (agriculture)
    Dryland farming is made possible mainly by the fallow system of farming, a practice dating from ancient times. Basically, the term fallow refers to land that is plowed and tilled but left unseeded during a growing season. The practice of alternating wheat and fallow assumes that by clean cultivation the moisture received during the fallow period is stored for use during the crop season.......
  • falls (geology)
    area where flowing river water drops abruptly and nearly vertically (see ). Waterfalls represent major interruptions in river flow. Under most circumstances, rivers tend to smooth out irregularities in their flow by processes of erosion and deposition. In time, the long profile of a river (the graph of its gradient) takes the form of a smooth curve, steepest toward the so...
  • Falls Church (Virginia, United States)
    independent city, northeast Virginia, U.S., just west of Washington, D.C. Its history centres around the Falls Church (Episcopal; 1767–69), which was built on the site of an earlier church erected in 1734 and named for its nearness to the Great Falls of the Potomac River. The church was attended by George Washington...
  • Falls Church (church, Falls Church, Virginia, United States)
    independent city, northeast Virginia, U.S., just west of Washington, D.C. Its history centres around the Falls Church (Episcopal; 1767–69), which was built on the site of an earlier church erected in 1734 and named for its nearness to the Great Falls of the Potomac River. The church was attended by George Washington and George Mason; it served as a recruiting station during the American......
  • Falls of the Ohio (waterfall, Kentucky)
    ...navigable depth of 9 feet (3 metres), carries cargoes of coal, oil, steel, and manufactured articles. It has a total fall of only 429 feet (130 metres), the one major hazard to navigation being the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, where locks control a descent of about 24 feet (7 metres) within a distance of 2.5 miles (4 km)....
  • Falls Station (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
    city, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The city lies along the Congo River, just below Boyoma (formerly Stanley) Falls. It is the nation’s major inland port after Kinshasa. Above Kisangani, the Boyoma Falls, consisting of seven cataracts, impede river navigation for about 56 miles (90 km); a short railroad carries river freight between Kisangani and the port...
  • Falls, The (New Jersey, United States)
    city and capital of New Jersey, U.S., seat (1837) of Mercer county, and industrial metropolis at the head of navigation on the Delaware River. It lies 28 miles (45 km) northeast of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and about 55 miles (89 km) southwest of New York City....
  • Falluja (Iraq)
    ...electrical installations, oil pipelines, and other civilian institutions. The resistance was concentrated mainly in Baghdad and the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of the capital, especially in Al-Fallūjah. A push by U.S. and central government forces failed to gain control of that city in April 2004, but a renewed effort succeeded in November. Major confrontations between coalition...
  • Fallūjah, Al- (Iraq)
    ...electrical installations, oil pipelines, and other civilian institutions. The resistance was concentrated mainly in Baghdad and the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of the capital, especially in Al-Fallūjah. A push by U.S. and central government forces failed to gain control of that city in April 2004, but a renewed effort succeeded in November. Major confrontations between coalition...
  • Falmouth (Massachusetts, United States)
    town (township), Barnstable county, southeastern Massachusetts, U.S., on the southwestern end of Cape Cod. It includes the villages of Falmouth, East Falmouth, Hatchville, North Falmouth, Teaticket, Waquoit, West Falmouth, and Woods Hole. The site, called Succanessett by Algonquian-speaking Native Americans, was settled in 1661 by Quakers le...
  • Falmouth (Maine, United States)
    city, seat (1760) of Cumberland county, southwestern Maine, U.S. The state’s largest city, it is the hub of a metropolitan statistical area that includes the cities of South Portland and Westbrook and the towns of Falmouth, Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Freeport, Gorham, Scarborough, Windham, and Yarmouth and, in York county, the town of Old Orchard Beach. The city is built...
  • Falmouth (Jamaica)
    town and Caribbean port, north Jamaica, at the mouth of Martha Brae River. It is a trading centre for sugar, rum, coffee, ginger, pimiento, bananas, honey, and dyewood. Although neglected in appearance, the town has some fine Georgian architecture, particularly the Court House (1813; restored after a fire) and the Post Office, which reflects its former importance as a shipping p...
  • Falmouth (England, United Kingdom)
    town (“parish”), Carrick district, administrative and historic county of Cornwall, England, on the western shore of the Carrick Roads. Falmouth occupies a peninsular site and faces water on two sides. The old part of the town overlooks the inner harbour in Carrick Roads, whereas the newer residential area, with hotels, faces Falmouth Bay of the E...
  • FALN (nationalist organization, Puerto Rico)
    separatist organization in Puerto Rico that has used violence in its campaign for Puerto Rican independence from the United States....
  • falsafah (Islam)
    Al-Fārābī contributed to the ongoing Islāmization of Hellenistic thought. Falsafah, the Arabic cognate for the Greek philosophia, included metaphysics and logic, as well as the positive sciences, such as mathematics, music, astronomy, and anatomy. ......
  • falsche Woldemar, Der (work by Alexis)
    ...of presentation. Der Roland von Berlin (1840) portrays the struggle for power in the 15th century between the municipal authorities of Berlin-Kölln and the ruler of Brandenburg; Der falsche Woldemar (1842; “The False Woldemar”) recounts the rise and fall of a 14th-century pretender. In the first part of Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow (1846–48;......
  • “Fälscher, Die” (film by Ruzowitzky [2007])
    Other Nominees ...
  • false acacia (plant)
    in botany, any tree of the genus Robinia within the pea family (Fabaceae). About 20 species are known, all occurring in eastern North America and Mexico. The best known is the black locust (R. pseudoacacia), often called false acacia, or yellow locust. It is widely cultivated in Europe as an ornamental. It grows to 24 m (80 feet) high and bears long, compound leaves with 6 to 20......
  • False Alarm, The (work by Johnson)
    ...positions favourable to the government but in keeping with his own views. These have often appeared reactionary to posterity but are worth considering on their own terms. The False Alarm (1770) supported the resolution of the House of Commons not to readmit one of its members, the scandalous John Wilkes, who had been found guilty of libel. The pamphlet......
  • false arborvitae (plant)
    (Thujopsis dolabrata), ornamental and timber evergreen tree or shrub of the cypress family (Cupressaceae), native to Japan. It is closely related to the arborvitae but has larger leaves, marked on the underside with depressed white bands. The trees are often 35 metres (115 feet) tall....
  • false assumption, method of (mathematics)
    ...(that is, 2 + 1/4 + 1/8), and its multiple by 7 (16 + 1/2 + 1/8) becomes the required answer. This type of procedure (sometimes called the method of “false position” or “false assumption”) is familiar in many other arithmetic traditions (e.g., the Chinese, Hindu, Muslim, and Renaissance European), although they ...
  • false banana (banana genus)
    The presence of distinct agricultural zones at different elevations is most marked in Ethiopia, where the distinctive “false banana,” or ensete, is grown at medium elevations in the forest belt of the south, Mediterranean fruits and vines are grown at higher elevations, and barley, wheat, and the indigenous cereal teff are grown in plowed fields on the high plateau....
  • false bass (music)
    musical texture prevalent during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, produced by three voices proceeding primarily in parallel motion in intervals corresponding to the first inversion of the triad. Only two of the three parts were notated, a plainchant melody together with the lowest voice a sixth below (as e below c′); occasional octaves (as c–c′) occurred as well. Th...
  • False Bay (bay, South Africa)
    bay on the south side of Cape Peninsula, South Africa, 13 mi (21 km) southeast of Cape Town. Cape Hangklip (east) and Cape Point (west) are about 20 mi apart. Its name refers to the fact that early sailors confused the bay with Table Bay to the north. It is well sheltered, though experiencing southeasterly winds in summer; and its waters are approximately 10° F (5.5° C) warmer than t...
  • false beech (plant)
    Nothofagaceae, or the southern or silver beech family, consists of 35 species of Nothofagus that are scattered throughout southern South America, Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the mountains of New Guinea. The history of the genus has frequently been cited as evidence of continental drift after the breakup of the single large continent of Gondwana during the......
  • false blister beetle (insect)
    any of approximately 1,500 species of beetles (insect order Coleoptera) that are slender and soft bodied, and are usually pale with blue, yellow, orange, or red markings....
  • false buckthorn (plant)
    ...The plants typically have gummy or milky sap and extremely hard wood. The branches may be thorny, with alternate leaves that are entire (smooth edged). S. lanuginosa, variously known as chittamwood, shittamwood, gum elastic, and false buckthorn, is sometimes cultivated as an ornamental. It grows to about 15 metres (50 feet) tall. The leaves are 3.75–10 cm (1.5–4 inches)......
  • false cause, fallacy of (logic)
    ...from p as a premise to p as conclusion is not deductively invalid but lacks any power of conviction, since no one who questioned the conclusion could concede the premise. (5) The fallacy of false cause (non causa pro causa) mislocates the cause of one phenomenon in another that is only seemingly related. The most common version of this fallacy, called post hoc ergo......
  • false chinch bug (insect)
    The hairy chinch bug (Blissus hirtus) does not migrate. This short-winged insect, sometimes a lawn pest, is controlled by fertilizing, watering, and cutting grass. The false chinch bug (Nysius ericae) is brownish gray and resembles the chinch bug. It feeds on many plants but is rarely an important crop pest. ...
  • false conflict (law)
    ...in the 1950s. Currie’s approach sought to determine whether a “true” or “false” conflict exists between the law of the forum state and that of the other involved state. A false conflict exists if the laws of both states do not differ; if, though ostensibly different, both laws are designed to effectuate the same policy; or if one law is construed to be inappli...
  • false consciousness (political philosophical concept)
    ...distribution of economic and political power. Even exploited workers may fail to understand their true interests and accept the dominant ideology—a condition that later Marxists called “false consciousness.” One particularly pernicious source of ideological obfuscation is religion, which Marx called “the opium of the people” because it purportedly dulls the......
  • false coral snake (reptile)
    ...snakes (Micrurus), long recognized as dangerously poisonous—which possess a brilliant red, black, and yellow ringed pattern—and several genera of nonpoisonous and mildly poisonous “false coral snakes” with nearly identical colour patterns....
  • false cypress (tree)
    any of some seven or eight species of ornamental and timber evergreen conifers (family Cupressaceae) native to North America and eastern Asia....
  • False Decretals (religious literature)
    a 9th-century collection of ecclesiastical legislation containing some forged documents. The principal aim of the forgers was to free the Roman Catholic church from interference by the state and to maintain the independence of the bishops against the encroachments of the archbishops, who were attempting to extend their power....
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