| Ahab |
the tragic hero of Herman Melville's nineteenth-century novel Moby Dick, who is ruled by an obsession to kill the white whale of the title. [1/2 definitions] |
| art nouveau |
(sometimes cap.) a style of art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notable for motifs taken from nature and expressed with curved lines. |
| Babism |
a nineteenth-century Persian religion that forbade alcohol, polygamy, selling or buying slaves, and begging. |
| Beaux-Arts |
pertaining to the eclecticism, monumentality, and opulence of French architecture in the late nineteenth century. [1/3 definitions] |
| Cheshire cat |
in the nineteenth-century children's novel Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, a grinning cat that magically disappears, his grin being the last to fade away. |
| Christian Science |
a religion based on Christian scripture that was founded in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and that teaches that disease and illness can be treated by spiritual means. |
| clipper |
a fast type of sailing ship, built in the nineteenth century. [1/3 definitions] |
| Dracula |
in a late nineteenth-century novel by Bram Stoker, the title character, a vampire, who is able to transform himself into a bat. |
| eighteenth |
indicating rank or position between seventeenth and nineteenth. [2/3 definitions] |
| expressionism |
a movement in the arts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that emphasized the artist's subjective experience or perceptions, expressed through symbolic and often distorted or unconventional treatment of material. |
| Fenian |
a member of a group formed in the nineteenth century to advocate the ending of British rule in Ireland, composed of Irish and Irish-Americans. |
| fin de siecle |
(French) end of the century, specifically the nineteenth century. [1/2 definitions] |
| Frankenstein |
the title character of Mary W. Shelley's early nineteenth-century novel, who creates a monster that destroys him. [1/3 definitions] |
| Free-Soil |
of or pertaining to the Free-Soil party of the nineteenth century which opposed the extension of slavery into the territories acquired by the United States. |
| frigate |
a fast, medium-sized, armed sailing vessel used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [1/2 definitions] |
| galop |
a lively nineteenth-century dance in two-four time. [1/2 definitions] |
| great auk |
a large flightless North Atlantic auk that became extinct in the mid-nineteenth century. |
| Huckleberry Finn |
the protagonist and title character of a late nineteenth-century novel by Mark Twain. |
| impressionism |
(often cap.) a style of painting, originating in France in the late nineteenth century, directed toward capturing the vitality of a subject through observing the play of colored light and shadow upon it and painting quickly, using short brush strokes and unmixed colors. [1/2 definitions] |
| international |
(cap.) the name given to several socialist or workers' associations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [1/2 definitions] |
| ironclad |
a nineteenth-century warship with iron plate armor that covered wooden sides. [1/3 definitions] |