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GNOME
A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depicted as small humanoids who live underground. Gnome characteristics are reinterpreted to suit various storytellers and artists. Paracelsus's gnome is recognized to have derived from the German miners' legend about or , the "metallurgical or mineralogical demon", according to Georg Agricola (1530), also called (literal Latinization of ''Bergmännlein'', "mountain manikin") by Agriocola in a later work (1549), and described by other names such as (sing. ; Latinization of German ). Agricola recorded that, according to the legends of that profession, these mining spirits acted as miming and laughing pranksters who sometimes threw pebbles at miners, but could also reward them by depositing a rich vein of silver ore. Paracelsus also called ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Schlitt
Heinrich Schlitt (August 21, 1849 – November 13, 1923) was a German painter and illustrator, known for his fantasy motifs that feature gnomes, Dwarf (folklore), dwarves, and Fairy, faeries. He was one of the in-house artists at the Villeroy & Boch ceramic company in Mettlach, Saarland, and his designs for their beer steins remain popular with collectors to this day. Early life Schlitt was born in Wiesbaden in the Duchy of Nassau, what would now be in the modern day German state of Hesse. His father was a member of the court of the Duchy of Nassau#Dukes, Duke of Nassau, working as a coachman. After the Prussian annexation of the Duchy, Schlitt joined the Dutch military, a choice thought to be the result of the Schlitt family moving to the Netherlands with the rest of the exiled Duchy. Schlitt was a student of Kaspar Kögler at his school in Wiesbaden. In 1875, he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Wilhelm Lindenschmit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Book On Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, And Salamanders, And On The Other Spirits
''A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits'' () is a treatise by the Swiss lay theologian and philosopher Paracelsus, published posthumously in 1566. It is about elemental beings and their place in a Christian cosmology. Background ''A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits'' was written by Paracelsus (1493/1494 – 1541) late in his life, but it is not known what exact year it is from. The descriptions of elemental beings are based on various ancient and traditional sources, which the author adapted and reinterpreted. Summary Paracelsus argues from his reading of the Biblical creation narrative that man needs to use philosophy to gain knowledge about the natural world, or he will not be able to understand Christ and appreciate the Bible. The natural world contains many strange things, including elemental beings corresponding to the four classical elements: undines (water), sylphs ( air), gnomes (ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgius Agricola
Georgius Agricola (; born Georg Bauer; 24 March 1494 – 21 November 1555) was a German Humanist scholar, mineralogist and metallurgist. Born in the small town of Glauchau, in the Electorate of Saxony of the Holy Roman Empire, he was broadly educated, but took a particular interest in the mining and refining of metals. He was the first to drop the Arabic definite article ''al-'', exclusively writing ''chymia'' and ''chymista'' in describing activity that we today would characterize as chemical or alchemical, giving chemistry its modern name. For his groundbreaking work '' De Natura Fossilium'' published in 1546, he is generally referred to as the father of mineralogy and the founder of geology as a scientific discipline.Rafferty, John P. (2012). ''Geological Sciences; Geology: Landforms, Minerals, and Rocks''. New York: Britannica Educational Publishing, p. 10. He is well known for his pioneering work '' De re metallica libri XII'', that was published in 1556, one yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deformity
A deformity, dysmorphism, or dysmorphic feature is a major abnormality of an organism that makes a part of the body appear or function differently than how it is supposed to. Causes Deformity can be caused by a variety of factors: *Arthritis and other rheumatoid disorders *Chronic application of external forces, e.g. artificial cranial deformation *Chronic paresis, paralysis or muscle imbalance, especially in children, e.g. due to poliomyelitis or cerebral palsy *Complications at childbirth, birth *Damage to the fetus or uterus *Fractured bones left to heal without being properly Reduction (orthopedic_surgery), set (malunion) *Genetic mutation *Growth or hormone disorders *Skin condition, Skin disorders *Reconstructive surgery following a severe injury, e.g. Third degree burn, burn injury Deformity can occur in all organisms: * Frogs can be mutated due to ''Ribeiroia'' (Trematoda) infection. * Plant, Plants can undergo irreversible Cell (biology), cell deformation * Insect, In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dwarf (folklore)
A dwarf () is a type of supernatural being in Germanic folklore. Accounts of dwarfs vary significantly throughout history. They are commonly, but not exclusively, presented as living in mountains or stones and being skilled craftsmen. In early literary sources, only males are explicitly referred to as dwarfs. However, they are described as having sisters and daughters, while male and female dwarfs feature in later saga literature and folklore. Dwarfs are sometimes described as short; however, scholars have noted that this is neither explicit nor relevant to their roles in the earliest sources. Dwarfs continue to feature in modern popular culture, such as in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Terry Pratchett, where they are often, but not exclusively, presented as distinct from elves. Etymology and meaning Etymology The modern English noun ''dwarf'' descends from . It has a variety of Cognate, cognates in other Germanic languages, including Old Norse ''dvergr'', Old Frisian ''dw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Span (unit)
A span is the distance measured by a human hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. In ancient times, a span was considered to be half a cubit. Sometimes the distinction is made between the great span or full span (thumb to little finger) and little span or short span (thumb to index finger, or index finger to little finger). History Ancient Greek texts show that the span was used as a fixed measure in ancient Greece since at least archaic period. The word ''spithame'' ( Greek: "σπιθαμή"), "span", is attested in the work of Herodotus in the 5th century BC; however, the span was used in Greece long before that, since the word ''trispithamos'' (Greek: "τρισπίθαμος"), "three spans long", occurs as early as the 8th century BC in Hesiod. Hesiod, ''Works and Days'', 426, oPerseus Digital Library/ref> Size of the span English usage ; 1 span := 9 inches := 22.86 cm Chinese usage In China and Chinese cultured countries, a span (一拃) re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elemental
An elemental is a mythic supernatural being that is described in occult and alchemy, alchemical works from around the time of the European Renaissance, and particularly elaborated in the 16th century works of Paracelsus. According to Paracelsus and his subsequent followers, there are four categories of elementals, which are gnomes, undine (alchemy), undines, sylphs, and salamanders in folklore and legend, salamanders. These correspond to the four Empedoclean elements of antiquity: earth (classical element), earth, water (classical element), water, air (classical element), air, and fire (classical element), fire, respectively. Terms employed for beings associated with alchemical elements vary by source and gloss. History The Paracelsian concept of elementals draws from several much older traditions in mythology and religion. Common threads can be found in folklore, animism, and anthropomorphism. Examples of creatures such as the Pygmy (Greek mythology), Pygmy were taken from Gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pygmæi
The Pygmies ( ''Pygmaioi'', from the adjective πυγμαῖος, from the noun πυγμή ''pygmē'' "fist, boxing, distance from elbow to knuckles," from the adverb πύξ ''pyx'' "with the fist") were a tribe of diminutive humans in Greek mythology. Attestations According to the ''Iliad'', they were involved in a constant war with the cranes, which migrated in winter to their homeland on the southern shores of the earth-encircling river Oceanus: According to Aristotle in '' History of Animals'', the story is true: Hesiod wrote that Epaphus, son of Zeus, through his daughters was the ancestor of the "dark Libyans, and high-souled Aethiopians, and the Underground-folk and feeble Pygmies". According to Stephanus of Byzantium, the tribe of Pygmies was descended from Pygmaios, son of Doros, son of Epaphus. One story in Ovid describes the origin of the age-old battle, speaking of a Pygmy Queen named Gerana who offended the goddess Hera with her boasts of superior beau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quark
A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nucleus, atomic nuclei. All commonly observable matter is composed of up quarks, down quarks and electrons. Owing to a phenomenon known as ''color confinement'', quarks are never found in isolation; they can be found only within hadrons, which include baryons (such as protons and neutrons) and mesons, or in quark–gluon plasmas. There is also the theoretical possibility of #Other_phases_of_quark_matter, more exotic phases of quark matter. For this reason, much of what is known about quarks has been drawn from observations of hadrons. Quarks have various Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic physical property, properties, including electric charge, mass, color charge, and Spin (physics), spin. They are the only elementary particles in the Standard Mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American theoretical physicist who played a preeminent role in the development of the theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as the fundamental building blocks of the strongly interacting particles, and the renormalization group as a foundational element of quantum field theory and statistical mechanics. He played key roles in developing the concept of chirality in the theory of the weak interactions and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the strong interactions, which controls the physics of the light mesons. In the 1970s he was a co-inventor of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which explains the confinement of quarks in mesons and baryons and forms a large part of the Standard Model of elementary particles and forces. Murray Gell-Mann received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. Life and education Gell-Mann was bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Reconstruction
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: * Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language – that is, it is based on evidence from that language alone. * Comparative reconstruction, usually referred to just as reconstruction, establishes features of the ancestor of two or more related languages, belonging to the same language family, by means of the comparative method. A language reconstructed in this way is often referred to as a proto-language (the common ancestor of all the languages in a given family). Texts discussing linguistic reconstruction commonly preface reconstructed forms with an asterisk (*) to distinguish them from attested forms. An attested word from which a root in the proto-language is reconstructed is a . More generally, a reflex is the known deriv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first edition in 1884, traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, and provides ongoing descriptions of English language usage in its variations around the world. In 1857, work first began on the dictionary, though the first edition was not published until 1884. It began to be published in unbound Serial (literature), fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of ''A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society''. In 1895, the title ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in 10 b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
