foreign exchange market (forex, or FX, market), institution for the exchange of one country’s currency with that of another country. Foreign exchange markets are actually made up of many different markets, because the trade between individual currencies—say, the euro and the U.S. dollar—each

Mexico: French intervention: …command of the French general Élie-Frédéric Forey. The Mexicans could not withstand French might, and on June 10, 1863, Forey rode as conqueror into Mexico City. The French rapidly secured much of central Mexico, forcing Juárez and his government to keep constantly on the move in the north.

Forez, former region of France lying on the eastern side of the Massif Central and included within the modern département of Loire. The name is derived from that of Feurs (Forum Segusiavorum in Roman times), a town midway between Roanne and Saint-Étienne, in an agriculturally rich area watered by

Forfar, small burgh (town), council area and historic county of Angus, eastern Scotland, situated at the eastern end of Forfar Loch (lake) in the scenic valley of Strathmore. It was in existence by 1057, when an early Scottish Parliament met in the castle to confer titles on the nobility. The

Grace Darling: …national attention after the steamship Forfarshire sank during a severe storm in September 1838. Nine people managed to find refuge on nearby rocks, and Darling and her father battled rough water to row to their rescue. The incident inspired numerous poems, paintings, and songs and made Darling a virtual cult…

Angus, council area and historic county in eastern Scotland, bounded on the east by the North Sea and on the south by the Firth of Tay. The council area lies entirely within the historic county of Angus, which also includes the city of Dundee and a small area south of Coupar Angus in the Perth and

ogham writing: …symbols, called in Irish tradition forfeda (“extra letters”), is seemingly a later development. The origin of ogham is in dispute; some scholars see a connection with the runic and, ultimately, Etruscan alphabets, while others maintain that it is simply a transformation of the Latin alphabet. The fact that it has…

Dick Francis: …novels are Nerve (1964) and Forfeit (1968), which won an Edgar Award for its tale of a disaffected racing correspondent who discovers a South African syndicate.

forge, open furnace for heating metal ore and metal for working and forming. From earliest times, smiths heated iron in forges and formed it by hammering on an anvil. A bellows operated by an assistant or by a foot treadle provided the forced draft for raising the temperature of the fire. Later, a

Vernon, city, southern British Columbia, Canada. It lies in Okanagan Lake country, 274 miles (441 km) northeast of Vancouver. Pioneers called the early settlement Priest’s Valley because of a missionary outpost maintained there by Paul Durieu. It was also known as Forge Valley (for its

welding: Forge welding: This original fusion technique dates from the earliest uses of iron. The process was first employed to make small pieces of iron into larger useful pieces by joining them. The parts to be joined were first shaped, then heated to welding temperature in…

Kang Youwei: …his reform movement, he wrote The Forged Classics (1891), which reveals that the Confucian Classics held sacrosanct as bases of the state cult had been tampered with in the Han period (206 bc–ad 220). This book was followed by Confucius as a Reformer (1897), which expounded Kang’s belief that Confucius…

forgery, in law, making of a false writing with an intent to defraud. Writing, to be forgery, must either have legal significance or be commonly relied upon in business transactions. It need not be handwriting; the law of forgery covers printing, engraving, and typewriting as well. In most

forgery, in art, a work of literature, painting, sculpture, or objet d’art that purports to be the work of someone other than its true maker. The range of forgeries extends from misrepresentation of a genuine work of art to the outright counterfeiting of a work or style of an artist. Forgery must

Le Creusot: … and Eugène Schneider founded the Société des Forges et Ateliers du Creusot (“Creusot Forge and Workshop Company”), which produced the first French locomotives as well as armour plate.

forget-me-not, any of several dozen species of the plant genus Myosotis (family Boraginaceae), native to temperate Eurasia and North America and to mountains of the Old World tropics. Some are favoured as garden plants for their clusters of blue flowers. (For Chinese forget-me-not, see

Boraginaceae, borage or forget-me-not family of flowering plants, with 148 genera and more than 2,700 species. The taxonomy of this family has been contentious: the earlier Cronquist botanical classification system placed it in the order Lamiales, and the first version of the Angiosperm Phylogeny

learning theory: Forgetting: Whether immediate and short-term data simply decay or are lost through interference is a matter of controversy. However, evidence is clearer that interference affects retention of information in long-term storage. Retention of the word happy (learned as a paired associate of table) seems to…

Edmund White: A foremost voice in gay fiction: White’s first published novel, Forgetting Elena (1973), is a biting satire that uses the perspective of an innocent young man to reveal the intricate manners and rituals of homosexual life on Fire Island, New York. That effort and its successors established White as among the foremost voices in gay…

Judd Apatow: …the Jason Segel-starring romantic comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) and The Five-Year Engagement (2012). In a change for Apatow, the movie Bridesmaids (2011) and the HBO TV series Girls (2012–17), both of which he produced, focused primarily on female characters. He both produced and directed Trainwreck (2015), a

forging, in metallurgy, process of shaping metal and increasing its strength by hammering or pressing. In most forging an upper die is forced against a heated workpiece positioned on a stationary lower die. If the upper die or hammer is dropped, the process is known as drop forging. To increase the

Padre Pio ; canonized June 16, 2002; feast day September 23) was an Italian priest and Capuchin friar known for his mysticism and healing abilities. In his own lifetime he drew many followers, and devotion to him increased after his death. He was made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 2002

Alexander McCall Smith: …Careful Use of Compliments (2007), The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (2011), The Novel Habits of Happiness (2015), and The Geometry of Holding Hands (2021). The 44 Scotland Street series began as installments published in the newspaper The Scotsman in 2004 and continued with such books as The Importance of Being…

Peter Jackson: The mock documentary Forgotten Silver (1995) and the ghost story The Frighteners (1996) followed.

Spain: Aragonese institutions and society: …kingdom of Valencia with the Fori Regni Valentiae (1240), a code of law largely Roman in substance. In 1247 he promulgated the Code of Huesca, a compilation of the customary law of Aragon; the code, which originally defined Aragon’s territory, came to embody the criminal and civil legal code in…

Gaspé Peninsula: Forillon, a national park occupying 93 square miles (240 square km), is at the northeastern tip of the peninsula. Both sporting and local interests benefit from the excellent hunting and fishing; the peninsula is drained by several outstanding salmon rivers. Lumbering is also a main…

forint, monetary unit of Hungary. The Hungarian National Bank (Magyar Nezmeti Bank), which has the sole authority to issue currency, issues coins in denominations ranging from 1 to 100 forints and banknotes of 200 to 20,000 forints. The obverse of banknotes depicts historical rulers, including

Forio, resort town and seaport on the western coast of the volcanic island of Ischia, Campania region, southern Italy. It is the centre of a productive wine-making region. The wine is called Epomeo for Mount Epomeo, the extinct volcano that is at least partially responsible for the island’s fertile

Efua Sutherland: …her plays, including the well-known Foriwa (1962), a play which stresses the alliance of new ways and old traditions, and Edufa (1967), based on Alcestis by Euripides. The Marriage of Anansewa: A Storytelling Drama appeared in 1975.

fork, implement consisting of two or more prongs supported by a handle, used for cooking, serving, and eating food. Forks and spoons together are known as flatware

André Philippus Brink: Brink’s memoir, A Fork in the Road (2009), is a meditation on the evolution of his political consciousness and his decreasing faith in the government of his country.

wind-blown moss, any plant of the genus Dicranum (subclass Bryidae), numbering 94 species distributed primarily throughout the Northern Hemisphere. They form dense cushions on soil, logs, or rocks. More than 20 species are native to North America. The most common is D. scoparium, sometimes called

lemur: Lemur diversity: Fork-crowned lemurs inhabit the forests along Madagascar’s western coast and live on a diet of gum and insects.

wind instrument: Flutes and reeds: …one, a technique known as cross-fingering. For example, to produce f rather than f♯, the player uncovered the fifth hole with the second finger of his right hand while keeping the sixth hole (and the first through fourth holes) covered. (Because this arrangement of the fingers looked vaguely like the…

darkling beetle: The forked fungus beetle (Bolitotherus cornutus) is easily recognized by a pair of blunt hornlike projections on the head. The dark adult is 10 to 12 mm (0.4–0.5 inch) long and has wing covers that resemble pieces of bark. The larvae live in woody bracket fungi.

Johann Nikolaus Forkel was one of the first great musicologists and the first biographer of Johann Sebastian Bach. After brief legal studies, he became organist at the university church at Göttingen, where, from 1778 until his death, he was musical director of the university. Forkel’s most

Gleicheniaceae, the forking fern family (order Gleicheniales), containing 6 genera and about 125 species. This relatively primitive family has a long fossil record dating back to the Jurassic Period (201.3 million to 145.0 million years ago). The extant genera are Gleichenella (1 species),

forklift truck, specialized form of industrial truck (q.v.) for elevating or lowering a

shorthand: Modern abbreviated longhand systems: Forkner Alphabet shorthand was first published in 1952 in the United States. The author, Hamden Forkner, spent 10 years in research before publishing the first edition of the new system, which uses a combination of conventional letters and a few symbols for the hard-to-write letters…

shorthand: Modern abbreviated longhand systems: The author, Hamden Forkner, spent 10 years in research before publishing the first edition of the new system, which uses a combination of conventional letters and a few symbols for the hard-to-write letters and sounds. For example, H is expressed by a short dash above the line.…

Winnipeg: The Forks National Historic Site, at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, commemorates the history of the Canadian West. Assiniboine Park includes a zoo and a conservatory. Also nearby are Bird’s Hill (northeast) and Beaudry (west) provincial parks. Winnipeg’s professional sports teams include the…

Chatham-Kent, municipality, southern Ontario, Canada. It lies at the confluence of the north and east branches of the Sydenham River, 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Detroit, Michigan. The town was called The Forks until it was renamed Wallaceburg for Sir William Wallace, a medieval Scottish national

forktail, any of seven species of birds of the Asian, chiefly Himalayan, genus Enicurus. Forktails usually are placed among the Old World flycatchers Muscicapidae (order Passeriformes). Forktails pick insects from stones along mountain streams and have loud whistling calls. Most are strikingly

dipluran, (order Diplura), any of a group of about 800 species of small primitive wingless insects, considered by some entomologists to have features similar to ancestral insects. Diplurans have two appendages, or cerci, extending backward from the last of their abdominal segments, for which they

Diego Forlán is an Uruguayan football (soccer) player who was awarded the Golden Ball as the standout player at the 2010 World Cup. His father, Pablo Forlán, had played for Uruguay in the 1966 and 1974 World Cup tournaments, and his maternal grandfather, Juan Carlos Corazo, had been a player with

Forlandet National Park, national park and bird sanctuary established in 1973 by Norway’s Environment Ministry for Svalbard. The Forlandet National Park has the greatest number of bird sanctuaries in the Svalbard archipelago: six in number, located throughout the southern and southeastern regions

Forlandet National Park, national park and bird sanctuary established in 1973 by Norway’s Environment Ministry for Svalbard. The Forlandet National Park has the greatest number of bird sanctuaries in the Svalbard archipelago: six in number, located throughout the southern and southeastern regions

Giulio Bizzozero: …for inguinal hernia (Bassini’s operation); Carlo Forlanini, who introduced therapeutic pneumothorax in treating pulmonary tuberculosis; and Antonio Carle and Giorgio Rattone, who demonstrated the transmissibility of tetanus.

hydrofoil: …in Italy about 1900 by Enrico Forlanini. Hydrofoils were not widely used until the 1950s, when military and commercial models were built. By the 1970s hydrofoil craft were in operation in many places, and speeds of up to 80 knots (nautical miles per hour) had been achieved.

Forlì, city, Emilia-Romagna regione, northern Italy, situated on the Montone River and the Via Aemilia, southeast of Bologna. Known to the Romans as Forum Livii, it is said to have been founded by the consul Livius Salinator in the 2nd century bc. As a 12th-century commune, it was in league with

spearfishing: …gun invented by a Frenchman, Maxime Forlot, and a popular spear gun designed by his compatriot Georges Beuchat that was propelled by a rubber elastic band. Other guns were designed that used gunpowder, carbon dioxide, or compressed air to propel the spear; one of the latter type, invented in 1956…

form, in crystallography, all crystal faces having similar symmetry. Those forms that enclose space are called closed forms; those that do not, open forms. The faces that comprise a form will be similar in appearance, even though of different shapes and sizes; this similarity may be evident from

musical form, the structure of a musical composition. The term is regularly used in two senses: to denote a standard type, or genre, and to denote the procedures in a specific work. The nomenclature for the various musical formal types may be determined by the medium of performance, the technique

zoology: Historical background: …continuously evolving into highly adapted forms—required the rejection of the static view that all species are especially created and upset the Linnaean concept of species types. Darwin recognized that the principles of heredity must be known to understand how evolution works; but, even though the concept of hereditary factors had…

form, the external shape, appearance, or configuration of an object, in contradistinction to the matter of which it is composed; in Aristotelian metaphysics, the active, determining principle of a thing as distinguished from matter, the potential principle. The word form has been used in a number

aesthetics: Relationship between form and content: …upon the given “appearance”—the “form.” It is this that holds our attention and that gives to the work of art its peculiar individuality. Because it addresses itself to our sensory appreciation, the work of art is essentially concrete, to be understood by an act of perception rather than by…

It’s the end of January, and April 15 seems a long way off, but you may already be receiving 1099 tax forms in the mail. You may be wondering why you’re receiving them, whether they’ll affect your return, and if you’ll owe more income tax because of the amounts reported on these 1099 forms.

linguistics: Syntax: …syntax were the notions of form classes and constituent structure. (These notions were also relevant, though less central, in the theory of morphology.) Bloomfield defined form classes, rather imprecisely, in terms of some common “recognizable phonetic or grammatical feature” shared by all the members. He gave as examples the form…

form criticism, a method of biblical criticism that seeks to classify units of scripture into literary patterns (such as love poems, parables, sayings, elegies, legends) and that attempts to trace each type to its period of oral transmission. The purpose is to determine the original form and the

gauge: Form gauges are used to check the profile of objects; two of the most common types are radius gauges, which are packs of blades with both concave and convex circular profiles that are used to check the radii of grooves and corners, and screw-thread pitch…

Sir Herbert Read: …that he first made in Form in Modern Poetry (1932) between organic and abstract form. He favoured organic form, which takes shape to meet the needs of a particular expression, rather than abstract form, which he defined as being superimposed on a given content. The concept of the organic was…

cookbook: …the earliest in English was The Form of Cury (the word cury is an obsolete term for cooked food), compiled in the 12th century. It consists of 196 recipes, many of which reveal their French origin in names such as “Blank Manng” and “Payn Fondewe.” One of the first French…

Gustavus Adolphus: Resolution of internal problems: The Form of Government of 1634 summed up these reforms in a general statute giving Sweden a central administration more modern and efficient than that of any other European country. Stockholm became a true capital with a permanent population of civil servants, the most important of…

J. Hillis Miller: …Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers (1965), The Form of Victorian Fiction: Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Meredith, and Hardy (1968), and The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (1963). He drew heavily on ideas of the absence or death of the divine. By 1970, however, he had joined the deconstructionist critics…

history of logic: The 16th century: …consciousness of the importance of logical form (forms of sentences, as well as forms or patterns of arguments). Although the medievals made many distinctions among patterns of sentences and arguments, the modern logical notion of “form” perhaps first crystallized in the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton and the English…

idea, active, determining principle of a thing. The word, brought into English from the Greek eidos, was for some time most commonly used roughly in the technical sense given to it by Plato in his theory of forms. By the 17th century it had come to be used more or less in its modern sense of

sociology: Social stratification: …Divided We Stand (1985) by William Form, whose analysis of labour markets revealed deep permanent fissures within working classes previously thought to be uniform.

machine tool: Gear-cutting machines: The form-cutting method uses a cutting tool that has the same form as the space between two adjacent teeth on a gear. This method is used for cutting gear teeth on a milling machine. The template-cutting method uses a template to guide a single-point cutter on…

Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology and the renewal of spiritual life.: …Kritik der logischen Vernunft (1929; Formal and Transcendental Logic, 1969).

biography: Formal autobiography: This category offers a special kind of biographical truth: a life, reshaped by recollection, with all of recollection’s conscious and unconscious omissions and distortions. The novelist Graham Greene says that, for this reason, an autobiography is only “a sort of life” and uses…

Aristotle: Causation: …a lyre, which is the formal cause of one note’s being the octave of another. The third type of cause is the origin of a change or state of rest in something; this is often called the “efficient cause.” Aristotle gives as examples a person reaching a decision, a father…

pedagogy: Mental-discipline theories: The earliest mental-discipline theories of teaching were based on a premise that the main justification for teaching anything is not for itself but for what it trains—intelligence, attitudes, and values. By choosing the right material and by emphasizing rote methods of learning, according…

diversion: Forms of diversion: In more-formal situations, there is typically a program that the accused must complete as a condition of diversion. The offender is offered some form of treatment or voluntary sanction that, once completed, justifies the closing of the original case. For example, an offender who commits an…

equal opportunity: Fairness and equality: …opportunity, in contrast to the formal equal opportunity provided by open competition on its own.

fallacy: Formal fallacies: ” 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…

metalogic: …syntax (relations among expressions) of formal languages and formal systems. It is related to, but does not include, the formal treatment of natural languages. (For a discussion of the syntax and semantics of natural languages, see linguistics and semantics.)

formal logic, the abstract study of propositions, statements, or assertively used sentences and of deductive arguments. The discipline abstracts from the content of these elements the structures or logical forms that they embody. The logician customarily uses a symbolic notation to express such

history of logic: The 16th century: …Augustus De Morgan (De Morgan’s Formal Logic of 1847). The now standard discussions of validity, invalidity, and the self-conscious separation of “formal” from nonformal aspects of sentences and arguments all trace their roots to this work.

rational choice theory, school of thought based on the assumption that individuals choose a course of action that is most in line with their personal preferences. Rational choice theory is used to model human decision making, especially in the context of microeconomics, where it helps economists

formal operational stage, stage of human cognitive development, typically beginning around age 11 or 12, characterized by the emergence of logical thinking processes, particularly the ability to understand theories and abstract ideas and predict possible outcomes of hypothetical problems. The

formal organization, component of an organization’s social structure designed to guide and constrain the behaviour of the organization’s members. The label “formal” is used because the concept encompasses the officially sanctioned rules, procedures, and routines of the organization, as well as the

predication: The predication is formal if the subject necessarily entails (or excludes) the predicate; it is material if the entailment is contingent.

region: …or uniform, defined by the homogeneous distribution of some phenomena within it (e.g., a tropical rainforest).

metalogic: Model theory: In model theory one studies the interpretations (models) of theories formalized in the framework of formal logic, especially in that of the first-order predicate calculus with identity—i.e., in elementary logic. A first-order language is

sin: Formal sin is both wrong in itself and known by the sinner to be wrong; it therefore involves him in personal guilt. Material sin consists of an act that is wrong in itself (because contrary to God’s law and human moral nature) but which the…

social structure: This approach, sometimes called formal sociology, does not refer directly to individual behaviour or interpersonal interaction. Therefore, the study of social structure is not considered a behavioral science; at this level, the analysis is too abstract. It is a step removed from the consideration of concrete human behaviour, even…

formal system, in logic and mathematics, abstract, theoretical organization of terms and implicit relationships that is used as a tool for the analysis of the concept of deduction. Models—structures that interpret the symbols of a formal system—are often used in conjunction with formal systems.

property law: Wills: …also make use of a formal will, derived from the Roman testament. The characteristic of such a will is that it must be witnessed by a certain number (generally two or three in modern law) of disinterested witnesses. It is normally prepared by a professional, a notary on the Continent…

formaldehyde (HCHO), an organic compound, the simplest of the aldehydes, used in large amounts in a variety of chemical manufacturing processes. It is produced principally by the vapour-phase oxidation of methanol and is commonly sold as formalin, a 37 percent aqueous solution. Formalin may be

polymer: Synthetic polymers: The simplest polyacetal is polyformaldehyde. It has a high melting point and is crystalline and resistant to abrasion and the action of solvents. Acetal resins are more like metal than are any other plastics and are used in the manufacture of machine parts such as gears and bearings.

Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology and the renewal of spiritual life.: …Kritik der logischen Vernunft (1929; Formal and Transcendental Logic, 1969).

formalin, aqueous solution of formaldehyde

formalism, in mathematics, school of thought introduced by the 20th-century German mathematician David Hilbert, which holds that all mathematics can be reduced to rules for manipulating formulas without any reference to the meanings of the formulas. Formalists contend that it is the mathematical

aesthetics: Form: …one or another version of formalism, according to which the distinguishing feature of art—the one that determines our interest in it—is form. Part answers part, and each feature aims to bear some cogent relation to the whole. It is such facts as these that compel our aesthetic attention.

Formalism, innovative 20th-century Russian school of literary criticism. It began in two groups: OPOYAZ, an acronym for Russian words meaning Society for the Study of Poetic Language, founded in 1916 at St. Petersburg (later Leningrad) and led by Viktor Shklovsky; and the Moscow Linguistic Circle,

Max Scheler: …die materiale Wertethik (1913, 1916; Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values), Scheler argued that values, like the colours of the spectrum, are independent of the things to which they belong. He posited an order of five “ranks” of values, ranging from those of physical comfort to those of…

Max Scheler: …die materiale Wertethik (1913, 1916; Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values), Scheler argued that values, like the colours of the spectrum, are independent of the things to which they belong. He posited an order of five “ranks” of values, ranging from those of physical comfort to those of…

Western theatre: Russia: …Kamerny Theatre, Meyerhold developed the Formalist style, in which representative types replaced individual characters amid Constructivist settings of gaunt scaffolding supporting bare platforms, with every strut and bolt exposed to view. The aggressive functionalism of this type of setting was regarded as having considerable propaganda value at a time when…

transcendental idealism, term applied to the epistemology of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who held that the human self, or transcendental ego, constructs knowledge out of sense impressions and from universal concepts called categories that it imposes upon them. Kant’s

liquid: Formality: Many compounds do not exist in molecular form, either as pure substances or in their solutions. The particles that make up sodium chloride (NaCl), for example, are sodium ions (Na+) and chloride ions (Cl-), and, although equal numbers of these two ions are present…