| Afrikaans |
a South African language developed from seventeenth-century Dutch. |
| agave |
any of the tropical American plants, such as the century plant, that are related to the amaryllis and have tall, branched clusters of flowers and leaves with spiny edges. |
| 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] |
| Albigenses |
the members of a Christian sect that flourished in southern France from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, when it was exterminated for heresy. |
| Amish |
a Christian sect that separated from the Mennonites in the seventeenth century, the members of which advocate simple living and now live mostly in farming areas of the northeastern United States. [1/3 definitions] |
| Amos |
according to the Old Testament, a minor Hebrew prophet of the eighth century B.C. [1/2 definitions] |
| Anabaptist |
a member of any of several Protestant sects formed in the sixteenth century that baptized only adult believers, opposed military service, and advocated the separation of church and state. [1/2 definitions] |
| ancient Rome |
a civilization cultivated by the city-state of Rome from the 8th century B.C.E. through its development as a republic and its collapse as an empire in the 5th century A.D. |
| Angles |
a people from the lowlands of northern Germany who migrated to eastern England in the fifth century. |
| Arthur |
in legend, esp. as codified by Thomas Malory in the sixteenth-century Morte d'Arthur, the King of Britain and the leader of the Knights of the Round Table. |
| Attila |
the king of the Huns that invaded Europe in the fifth century (406?-453 A.D.). |
| Augustan |
of or relating to a neoclassic period, esp. the eighteenth century in England and its literature. [1/3 definitions] |
| Babbitt |
the title character and protagonist of Sinclair Lewis's early twentieth-century novel, who is smug, conventional, and resolutely middle-class. [1/2 definitions] |
| 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] |
| Beguine |
a member of a lay Roman Catholic sisterhood of the Netherlands, first established in the twelfth century, that allowed women to keep their private property and revoke their vows whenever they wished. |
| Black Death |
a deadly plague, probably bubonic, that was widespread in Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, characterized by dark splotches on the skin. |
| Black Lives Matter |
an early twenty-first century social and political movement that seeks to raise awareness of and put an end to unjust treatment of Black people, esp. that which occurs in the form of police brutality. |
| bourrée |
a French dance of the seventeenth century that is similar to the gavotte. [1/2 definitions] |
| Brobdingnag |
in Jonathan Swift's eighteenth-century novel Gulliver's Travels, a land inhabited by giants. |
| Buddhism |
a spiritual philosophy and religion, founded in the sixth century B.C. by Buddha and widespread in Asia, that teaches release from the self and from one's earthly desires. |