terra-cotta, literally, any kind of fired clay but, in general usage, a kind of object—e.g., vessel, figure, or structural form—made from fairly coarse, porous clay that when fired assumes a colour ranging from dull ochre to red and usually is left unglazed. Most terra-cotta has been of a

Venus: Surface features: …the continent-sized highland areas, or terrae—Ishtar Terra in the northern hemisphere and Aphrodite Terra along the equator. Ishtar is roughly the size of Australia, while Aphrodite is comparable in area to South America. Ishtar possesses the most spectacular topography on Venus. Much of its interior is a high plateau, called…

Venice: Terraferma: Although Venice may aptly be regarded as an isolated sea city, it has always had close links with the surrounding marshlands and the mainland of northern Italy. The Venetian republic included the perimeter of the lagoon, the dogado, within its territory. In addition, from…

tactics: The importance of terrain: Finally, in tactics (as in strategy) there is the topographical element to consider. Land warfare is fought neither in a vacuum nor on a uniformly checkered board. Instead, it unfolds over concrete terrain, including roads, passages, elevated ground, cover, and obstacles of every kind.…

cruise missile: …flight by a technique called Tercom (terrain contour matching), using contour maps stored in the system’s computerized memory. The air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) had a length of 6.3 m (20.7 feet); it attained a range of 2,500 km (1,500 miles). It was designed for deployment on the B-52 bomber. The…

geochronology: Stages and zones: …study of the French Jurassic Terrains Jurassiques (1842). This departure from a lithologically based concept of paleontologic succession enabled d’Orbigny to define paleontologically unique stages. Each stage represented a unique period in time and formed the basis of later work that resulted in the further subdivision of d’Orbigny’s original stages…

Western architecture: Italy: …of the Po River, the Terramare culture developed. This culture was characterized by a curious world of terramare, habitations built on pilings and protected by a vallum, or defensive wall, which screened them from floods (in the flat countryside, seasonal rains were violent). The name given to these habitations—singular terramara—comes…

beekeeping: Diseases: Sulfathiazole and Terramycin are widely used to control the disease. Many countries and most states in the U.S. require the destruction by fire of diseased colonies and have apiary inspectors to enforce the regulations.

Cambrian Period: Paleogeography: Several terranes (fault-bounded fragments of the Earth’s crust) seem to have been located near or attached to the margin of the northern Africa sector of Gondwana in the high southern latitudes, but many details of their Cambrian geographic relations are unknown. These terranes now make up…

box turtle: The eastern box turtle (T. carolina carolina) lays a maximum of eight eggs in a clutch, although clutches of three or four eggs are more typical.

terrapin, (Malaclemys terrapin), a term formerly used to refer to any aquatic turtle but now restricted largely, though not exclusively, to the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) of the turtle family Emydidae. Until the last third of the 20th century, the word terrapin was used commonly in

harlequin cabbage bug, (Murgantia histrionica), a species of insect in the stinkbug family, Pentatomidae (order Heteroptera), that sucks sap and chlorophyll from crops, such as cabbage, causing them to wilt and die. Though of tropical or subtropical origin, this insect now ranges from the Atlantic

Steve Earle: … (2013); the Texas blues album Terraplane (2015); the country-leaning So You Wannabe an Outlaw (2017); Guy (2019), a tribute record to Guy Clark; and Ghosts of West Virginia (2020), which features songs he wrote for the Off-Broadway play Coal Country, about a mining disaster. In 2021 Earle released J.T.,

terrarium, enclosure with glass sides, and sometimes a glass top, arranged for keeping plants or terrestrial or semi-terrestrial animals indoors. The purpose may be decoration, scientific observation, or plant or animal propagation. Plants commonly grown in terraria at cool temperatures include

Jorge Amado: …Terras do sem fim (1942; The Violent Land), about the struggle of rival planters, has the primitive grandeur of a folk saga.

James Nicholas Gray: …database technologies, Gray helped develop Microsoft TerraServer, a free searchable database of satellite images of the Earth’s surface, which went online in 1998, many years before the comparable Google Earth was launched. Beginning in 2002 Gray was also instrumental in developing SkySearch—released to the public in 2008 as the Microsoft…

Terrassa, city, Barcelona provincia (province), in the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Catalonia, in northeastern Spain. Terrassa lies along the coastal plain, just northwest of Barcelona city. The successor of Egara, a Roman town, it became in ad 450 an important episcopal see with a

Western architecture: Europe: The villa, Les Terrasses, at Garches, France (1927), was a lively play of spatial parallelepipeds (six-sided solid geometric forms the faces of which are parallelograms) ruled by horizontal planes, but his style seemed to culminate in the most famous of his houses, the Villa Savoye at Poissy,…

Joseph-Marie Terray was the French controller general of finances during the last four years of the reign of King Louis XV. Terray instituted a series of financial reforms that, had they been maintained and extended by Louis XVI, might have prevented the fiscal crises that led to the outbreak of

Makālu: …1955, two members—Jean Couzy and Lionel Terray—of a French party reached the summit, and seven more arrived within two days.

terrazzo, Type of flooring consisting of marble chips set in cement or epoxy resin that is poured and ground smooth when dry. Terrazzo was ubiquitous in the 20th century in commercial and institutional buildings. Available in many colours, it forms a hard, smooth, durable surface that is easily

Togo: Relief, drainage, and soils: …the region of the so-called terre de barre, a lateritic (reddish, leached, iron-bearing) soil.

pottery: Faience, or tin-glazed ware: …semiporcelain biscuit body known as terre-de-Lorraine, which was intended to resemble the biscuit porcelain of Sèvres. The work of both Sauvage and Cyfflé is extremely skillful.

Italian literature: Social commitment and the new realism: The Estate in Abruzzi]). Vivid pictures of the Florentine working classes were painted by Vasco Pratolini (Il quartiere [1945; “The District”; Eng. trans. The Naked Streets] and Metello [1955; Eng. trans. Metello]) and of the Roman subproletariat by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Wind, Sand and Stars, lyrical and humanistic chronicle of the adventures of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, published as Terre des hommes in 1939. Because of his aviation exploits, the author had a worldwide reputation. He used the memoir as a platform to extol cooperation, individual responsibility, and

Mouloud Feraoun: La Terre et le sang (1953; “Earth and Blood”) deals with an émigré whose life in France is burdened by the sequestration of his proud countrymen and with the importance of nif (“honour”), the basis of all traditional morality and the source of the sense…

Terre Haute, city, seat (1818) of Vigo county, western Indiana, U.S. It lies on a 10-mile (16-km) square plateau above the Wabash River (whence its French name meaning “high ground”), 71 miles (114 km) west-southwest of Indianapolis. The site was once a place of rendezvous for Indian tribes, and

Edmund White: …also wrote several plays, notably Terre Haute (2006), about an imagined encounter between characters based on Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and writer Gore Vidal.

Guatemala syphilis experiment: Study design: …were designed based on the Terre Haute prison experiments of 1943–44, which were carried out in consenting prisoners at a penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Intended to test preventative strategies for gonorrhea, the Terre Haute study ultimately failed to meet its goals because of difficulties with establishing the infection in…

René Bazin: La Terre qui meurt (1899; “The Dying Earth”) deals poignantly with the theme of emigration, as one by one the younger generation of a Vendée family leave their impoverished family farm to seek their fortunes in the city or in America. Les Oberlé (1901) concerns…

Émile Zola: Life: …portrait of peasant life in La Terre in 1887 led a group of five so-called disciples to repudiate Zola in a manifesto published in the important newspaper Le Figaro. His novel La Débâcle (1892), which was openly critical of the French army and government actions during the Franco-German War (1870–71),…

pottery: Faience, or tin-glazed ware: …semiporcelain biscuit body known as terre-de-Lorraine, which was intended to resemble the biscuit porcelain of Sèvres. The work of both Sauvage and Cyfflé is extremely skillful.

Muhammad Ali: …was succeeded by victories over Ernie Terrell and Zora Folley.

the Supremes: Jean Terrell became the first of many new group members who helped Wilson keep the Supremes alive and recording for seven years after Ross departed in 1970.

Mary Eliza Church Terrell was an American social activist who was cofounder and first president of the National Association of Colored Women. She was an early civil rights advocate, an educator, an author, and a lecturer on woman suffrage and rights for African Americans. Mary Church was the

Mary Eliza Church Terrell: …from Oberlin (1888) and married Robert Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who would become the first black municipal court judge in the nation’s capital.

Sonny Terry was an American blues singer and harmonica player who became the touring and recording partner of guitarist Brownie McGhee in 1941. Blinded in childhood accidents, Terry was raised by musical parents and developed a harmonica style that imitated sounds ranging from moving trains to

Marvin Gaye: …successful duets, most notably with Tammi Terrell (“Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” [1968]).

Cambrian Period: …into four stratigraphic series: the Terreneuvian Series (538.8 million to 521 million years ago), Series 2 (521 million to 509 million years ago), Series 3 (509 million to 497 million years ago), and the Furongian Series (497 million to 485.4 million years ago).

French Southern and Antarctic Territories, French overseas territory consisting of the islands of Saint-Paul and Nouvelle Amsterdam and the island groups of Kerguelen and Crozet in the southern Indian Ocean, as well as the Adélie Coast on the Antarctic continent. The barren and for the most part

human evolution: Background and beginnings in the Miocene: Indeed, obligate terrestrial bipedalism (that is, the ability and necessity of walking only on the lower limbs) is the defining trait required for classification in the human tribe, Hominini.

eclipse: Prediction and calculation of solar and lunar eclipses: …made some years ahead in Terrestrial Time (TT), which is defined by the orbital motion of Earth and the other planets. At the time of the eclipse, the correction is made to Universal Time (UT), which is defined by the rotation of Earth and is not rigorously uniform.

angiosperm: Contribution to food chain: …the principal component of the terrestrial biosphere, the angiosperm flora determines many features of the habitat, some of which are available food, aspects of the forest canopy, and grazing land. They supply nesting sites and materials for a wide range of birds and mammals, and they are the principal living…

Equator, great circle around Earth that is everywhere equidistant from the geographic poles and lies in a plane perpendicular to Earth’s axis. This geographic, or terrestrial, Equator divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres and forms the imaginary reference line on Earth’s surface

mobile telephone: Airborne cellular systems: …APC system known as the terrestrial flight telephone system (TFTS) in 1992. This system employs digital modulation methods and operates in the 1,670–1,675- and 1,800–1,805-megahertz bands. In order to cover most of Europe, the ground stations must be spaced every 50 to 700 km (30 to 435 miles).

terrestrial locomotion, any of several forms of animal movement such as walking and running, jumping (saltation), and crawling. Walking and running, in which the body is carried well off the surface on which the animal is moving (substrate), occur only in arthropods and vertebrates. Running

planet: Planets of the solar system: …Mercury to Mars, are called terrestrial planets; those from Jupiter to Neptune are called giant planets or Jovian planets. Between these two main groups is a belt of numerous small bodies called asteroids. After Ceres and other larger asteroids were discovered in the early 19th century, the bodies in this…

terrigenous sediment, deep-sea sediment transported to the oceans by rivers and wind from land sources. Terrigeneous sediments that reach the continental shelf are often stored in submarine canyons on the continental slope. Turbidity currents carry these sediments down into the deep sea. These

Nikola Tesla: …as his most important discovery—terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that Earth could be used as a conductor and made to resonate at a certain electrical frequency. He also lit 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 40 km (25 miles) and created man-made lightning, producing…

eclipse: Prediction and calculation of solar and lunar eclipses: …made some years ahead in Terrestrial Time (TT), which is defined by the orbital motion of Earth and the other planets. At the time of the eclipse, the correction is made to Universal Time (UT), which is defined by the rotation of Earth and is not rigorously uniform.

Reign of Terror, period of the French Revolution from September 5, 1793, to July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, year II). With civil war spreading from the Vendée and hostile armies surrounding France on all sides, the Revolutionary government decided to make “Terror” the order of the day (September 5

Lucille Clifton: … (1987), Quilting: Poems 1987–1990 (1991), The Terrible Stories (1996), Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988–2000 (2000), and Mercy (2004). Generations: A Memoir (1976) is a prose piece celebrating her origins, and Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969–1980 (1987) collects some of her previously published verse. The

Terry McGovern was an American professional boxer, world bantamweight (118 pounds) champion, 1899–1900, and featherweight (126 pounds) champion, 1900–01. (Read Gene Tunney’s 1929 Britannica essay on boxing.) Two years after starting his professional boxing career at age 17, McGovern won the vacant

John Boyne: …wrote several children’s books, including The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket (2012), Stay Where You Are & Then Leave (2013), and The Boy at the Top of the Mountain (2015). His other works for adult audiences include The Congress of Rough Riders (2001), The House of Special Purpose…

Ishmael Reed: …Terrible Twos (1982), its sequels The Terrible Threes (1989) and The Terrible Fours (2021), Japanese by Spring (1993), Juice! (2011), and Conjugating Hindi (2018). He also published numerous volumes of poetry, notably Conjure (1972), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Chattanooga (1973); A Secretary to the Spirits

Ishmael Reed: Reed’s later novels include The Terrible Twos (1982), its sequels The Terrible Threes (1989) and The Terrible Fours (2021), Japanese by Spring (1993), Juice! (2011), and Conjugating Hindi (2018). He also published numerous volumes of poetry, notably Conjure (1972), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer

rocket and missile system: Surface-to-air: …Talos was supplemented by the Terrier, a radar-beam rider, and the Tartar, a semiactive radar homing missile. These were replaced in the late 1960s by the Standard semiactive radar homing system. The solid-fueled, Mach-2 Standard missiles were deployed in medium-range (MR) and two-stage extended-range (ER) versions capable, respectively, of about…

terrier, Any of several dog breeds developed, mostly in England, to find and kill vermin and for use in the sports of foxhunting and dog fighting. Bred to fight and kill, they often were pugnacious but are now bred for a friendlier temperament. Because terriers had to fit in rodent burrows, most

sedimentary rock: …and sedimentary rock: (1) terrigenous clastic sedimentary rocks and (2) allochemical and orthochemical sedimentary rocks.

sedimentary facies: Sedimentary facies are either terrigenous, resulting from the accumulation of particles eroded from older rocks and transported to the depositional site; biogenic, representing accumulations of whole or fragmented shells and other hard parts of organisms; or chemical, representing inorganic precipitation of material from solution. As conditions change with time,…

terrigenous sediment, deep-sea sediment transported to the oceans by rivers and wind from land sources. Terrigeneous sediments that reach the continental shelf are often stored in submarine canyons on the continental slope. Turbidity currents carry these sediments down into the deep sea. These

pâté: …other distinct preparations: pâté en terrine, a meat, game, or fish mixture wrapped in suet or other animal fat or lining and cooked in a deep oval or oblong dish, without pastry, and served cold; and pâté en croûte, a meat, game, or fish filling cooked in a crust and…

tureen, covered container, sometimes made to rest on a stand or dish, from which liquids, generally soup or sauce, are served at table. The earliest silver and pottery examples, dating from the early 18th century, were called terrines or terrenes (from Latin terra, “earth”), which suggests a

William Terriss: Terriss’ daughter Ellaline (b. April 13, 1871—d. June 16, 1971) became a great star in music halls and in both straight and musical plays from the 1890s to the 1920s. After making her debut in 1888, she formed a team with her husband, the actor-manager…

William Terriss was one of England’s leading actors of the later Victorian stage. After scoring his first success as Doricourt in The Belle’s Stratagem, a comedy by Hannah Cowley, he appeared at the principal London theatres from 1868 until his death. At the Royal Court Theatre in 1878, Terriss

Wallis and Futuna, self-governing overseas collectivity of France consisting of two island groups in the west-central Pacific Ocean. The collectivity is geographically part of western Polynesia. It includes the Wallis Islands (Uvea and surrounding islets) and the Horne Islands (Futuna and Alofi).

British army: …the Territorial Force (after 1921, Territorial Army) and Special Reserve were established. The army was greatly increased in size by conscription during World War I but was reduced to a minimum with an end to conscription after 1919. In July 1939, however, conscription was again enforced.

asylum: Territorial asylum is granted within the territorial bounds of the state offering asylum and is an exception to the practice of extradition. It is designed and employed primarily for the protection of persons accused of political offenses such as treason, desertion, sedition, and espionage. It…

territorial behaviour, in zoology, the methods by which an animal, or group of animals, protects its territory from incursions by others of its species. Territorial boundaries may be marked by sounds such as bird song, or scents such as pheromones secreted by the skin glands of many mammals. If

Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, archipelago about 15 miles (25 km) off the southern coast of the island of Newfoundland, Canada, a collectivité of France since 1985. The area of the main islands is 93 square miles (242 square km), 83 square miles (215 square km) of which are in the Miquelons (Miquelon

Mark Twain: Apprenticeships of Mark Twain: …letters to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and these attracted the attention of the editor, Joseph Goodman, who offered him a salaried job as a reporter. He was again embarked on an apprenticeship, in the hearty company of a group of writers sometimes called the Sagebrush Bohemians, and again he…

British army: …the Territorial Force (after 1921, Territorial Army) and Special Reserve were established. The army was greatly increased in size by conscription during World War I but was reduced to a minimum with an end to conscription after 1919. In July 1939, however, conscription was again enforced.

procedural law: Jurisdiction, competence, and venue: …case) and questions of “territorial jurisdiction” (i.e., courts in which part of the country may take the case). In the United States the due process clause of the Constitution imposes limits on the states’ power to confer jurisdiction on their courts; consequently, a substantial amount of preliminary skirmishing may…

University of Central Oklahoma, public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. It consists of the colleges of Arts, Media, and Design; Business Administration; Education; Liberal Arts; and Mathematics and Science. The graduate college offers master’s degree programs

international law: Jurisdiction: According to the territorial principle, states have exclusive authority to deal with criminal issues arising within their territories; this principle has been modified to permit officials from one state to act within another state in certain circumstances (e.g., the Channel Tunnel arrangements between the United Kingdom and France…

Colorado School of Mines, public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Golden, Colorado, U.S. It is an applied-science and engineering college with a curriculum that covers such subjects as geology, environmental science, metallurgical and materials engineering, chemistry, mining,

international law: Maritime spaces and boundaries: The 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone provided that states cannot suspend the innocent passage of foreign ships through straits that are used for international navigation between one part of the high seas and another part of the high seas or the territorial sea…

territorial waters, in international law, that area of the sea immediately adjacent to the shores of a state and subject to the territorial jurisdiction of that state. Territorial waters are thus to be distinguished on the one hand from the high seas, which are common to all countries, and on the

animal social behaviour: Territoriality: Territoriality refers to the monopolization of space by an individual or group. While territories have been defined variously as any defended space, areas of site-specific dominance, or sites of exclusive monopolization of space, they can be quite fluid and short-term. For example, sanderlings (Calidris…

international law: Territory: The sovereignty of a state is confined to a defined piece of territory, which is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and is protected by international law from violation by other states. Although frontier disputes do not detract from the sovereignty or…

territory, in ecology, any area defended by an organism or a group of similar organisms for such purposes as mating, nesting, roosting, or feeding. Most vertebrates and some invertebrates, such as arthropods, including insects, exhibit territorial behaviour. Possession of a territory involves

Nérée Beauchemin: …was a prominent poet of Le Terroir (French: “The Soil”) school of Quebec regionalist poetry.

Franklin expedition: …the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror perished under mysterious circumstances. The British navy launched the most extensive search effort in its history but recovered few bodies and found no trace of the ships. It took nearly 170 years before the Erebus and Terror were finally located in the Arctic waters…

Susan Faludi: In The Terror Dream (2007), Faludi explored the American response to the September 11, 2001, attacks, arguing that the media promoted patriarchal views of gender. Her later works included In the Darkroom (2016), a memoir that centres on her estranged father, who underwent gender reassignment surgery…

Joseph H. Lewis: …group was the cult classic Terror in a Texas Town (1958). Sterling Hayden played a whaler looking to avenge his father’s death; the final showdown has him armed with a harpoon. Late in his career, Lewis earned the nickname “Wagon Wheel Joe” for a visual trick he often used, filming…

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz: …Peur dans la montagne (1925; Terror on the Mountain), young villagers challenge fate by grazing their cattle on a mountain pasture despite a curse that hangs over it; and the reader shares their panic and final despair. Among his other works are La Beauté sur la terre (1927; Beauty on…

Ross Island: …feet [3,800 metres] high) and Mount Terror (10,750 feet) among a series of mountain ranges intersected by deep valleys. Mount Erebus was the site in 1979 of a crash that claimed 257 lives on a sightseeing and photographic flight over Antarctica. The ranges are free of snow except for hanging…

Reign of Terror, period of the French Revolution from September 5, 1793, to July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, year II). With civil war spreading from the Vendée and hostile armies surrounding France on all sides, the Revolutionary government decided to make “Terror” the order of the day (September 5

Targets: …latest picture are from Corman’s The Terror (1963), which starred Karloff. Bogdanovich also has a supporting role as a put-upon movie director.

Reign of Terror, period of the French Revolution from September 5, 1793, to July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, year II). With civil war spreading from the Vendée and hostile armies surrounding France on all sides, the Revolutionary government decided to make “Terror” the order of the day (September 5

war on terrorism, term used to describe the American-led global counterterrorism campaign launched in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In its scope, expenditure, and impact on international relations, the war on terrorism was comparable to the Cold War; it was intended to

terrorism, the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by

John Updike: …September 11 attacks, Updike released Terrorist in 2006.

Diane Johnson: …Kubrick); a collection of essays, Terrorists and Novelists (1982); and Into a Paris Quartier (2005), about Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood. The memoir Flyover Lives was published in 2014.

Thomas Nashe: The Terrors of the Night (1594) is a discursive, sometimes bewildering, attack on demonology.

Milton Caniff: …American comic-strip artist, originator of “Terry and the Pirates” and “Steve Canyon,” which were noted for their fine draftsmanship, suspense, and humour.

textile: Pile weave: In weaving terry pile fabrics, the ground warp is under tension, and the pile warp stays slack. When wefts are beaten in, the slack yarns are pushed into loops on both sides of the cloth.

Douglas Dunn: Dunn’s first book of poetry, Terry Street (1969), was widely hailed for its evocation of working-class Hull. Critics praised Dunn’s dry humour and his ability to capture the sordid with precision, free of sentimentality. Backwaters and Night (both 1971), The Happier Life (1972), and Love or Nothing (1974) were not…

Terry v. Ohio, U.S. Supreme Court decision, issued on June 10, 1968, which held that police encounters known as stop-and-frisks, in which members of the public are stopped for questioning and patted down for weapons and drugs without probable cause (a reasonable belief that a crime has been or is

Battle of the Little Bighorn: Alfred H. Terry headed west from Fort Abraham Lincoln in charge of the Dakota Column, the bulk of which constituted Custer’s 7th Cavalry. On June 22 Terry sent Custer and the 7th Cavalry in pursuit of Sitting Bull’s trail, which led into the Little Bighorn…