Difference between revisions of "E"

Latest revision as of 10:22, 5 December 2012

Eagres
107; tideal bore in a river, now esp. that of the river Trent. A tidal bore is a steep-fronted wave caused by the meeting of two tides or by the constriction of a spring tide as it passes up an estuary.

Earth
602

139; aka John Company; 252; 270; 479; 539; MORE; E.I.C. Website

Ecole de Piraterie
27; French: School of Piracy

EDGES

353

E-do
432; what Tokyo was called in the 18th century

Eggslap, Mrs.
455; extortionist cook on M-D Line and Stig's lover; 546; 614

Ehud
454; on M-D Line crew

E.I.C.
See East India Company

Elan, or Esprit
27; these are the names of two cars manufactured by Lotus, in Great Britain

Eldritch Powers
498; Weird, occult, or magical powers (derived from elfriche: fairylande)

Elect Cohens
358; "Cohen" is the Hebrew word for priest. Much of the book of Leviticus is devoted to spelling out their duties. As for the "Elect Cohens of Paris," they were an 18th century Masonic group. All of the Cohens are "elect" in the sense that God chose them for his priests; 485; 612

Electricity
307

Electrophiles
295

190; Reference to a the days skipped when the English finally adopted the Gregorian calendar.The Gregorian calendar, a modification of the Julian, introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII and at first adopted by only Catholic countries, was not adopted in England until 1752. It is the present calendar system which removed the leap year three times every four hundred years from the Julian calendar. It does a better job at keeping the summer solstice on June 21st. By 1752 England and the eastern part of America was finding that the summer solstice arrived on June 10th hence the need for an eleven day addition; Schizochronic year of '52, 192; Calendar Reform of '52, 554-55; 603; 629; See also New Style. See WIKI.

Elijah
297; "the Swamper"

Eliza
529; See Fields, Eliza

Elkton
390; where Dimdown runs clandestine printing press

Ellicott Clock
121

Alternate name for Felipe, the electric eel ( Torpedo), 431

Elsinore, Battlements of
545; opening location of Hamlet, where the ghost of Hamlet's father appears

Elytra
88

Emerson, William (1701-82)

There was living at that time at the village of Hurworth, a few miles from Darlington, an eccentric character, William Emerson, whose unconventionality in dress and manners were rather at variance with the fact that he was a man of education with considerable knowledge of mathematics and physics. ... Jeremiah was brought to notice by someone named Emerson who was probably this man; that he was summoned to the Woolwich academy for examination and evidently satisfied his examiners, for they asked him, "Were you at Oxford or Cambridge?" "Neither," he said. "Well then, where did you get your knowledge of astronomy?" "In my pit-cabin at Cockfield Fell," he replied, meaning doubtless in the office at his father's colliery where he was then engaged in some capacity above ground. ^[1]

17; Dixon's "old teacher"; Mr. Emerson was a real person, a minor mathematician and scientist of his day who wrote about a dozen scientific books and texts and whom Jeremiah Dixon did in fact know personally. Emerson's mystickal nature may be a Pynchon invention; 73; 98; 215; 251; 268; 317; 318; 423; coat, 500; Dixon first hearing of (from Lady Barnard), 507; 556; of Hurworth, 568; 709; Wikipedia entry

Encyclopédie
389; 18th century French encyclopaedia that was the creation of the Philosophes, who were dedicated to the spirit of the Enlightenment, i.e., open-mindedness, secular thought and the advancement of science; Encyclopaedists, 359; Encyclopédistes, 546

An incident during Pontiac's Rebellion. On July 26, 1764 four Delaware (Lenape) American Indian warriors entered a log schoolhouse of white settlers in what is now Franklin County, Pennsylvania, near present Greencastle. Inside the schoolhouse were schoolmaster Enoch Brown and twelve students. Brown pleaded with the warriors to spare the children before being shot and later scalped. The warriors then began to tomahawk and scalp the children. Nine children were killed and two children who had been scalped survived. From WIKI See also The Black Boys

499;

Ensign Cheer
477; a sarcastic reference to Mason's pessimism

421; E-O: "Even Odds"; a roulette (French: "small wheel") wheel, a gambling game based on opposing pairs, e.g. black/white, even/odd, in which players bet on which red or black numbered compartment of a revolving wheel a small ball (spun in the opposite direction) will come to rest within. Bets are placed on a table marked to correspond with the compartments of the wheel.

Ephemeris
765; a table showing the assigned places of a celestial body for regular intervals, used often in Astrology

Epictetus (c.55-c.135)
30; a Roman slave later exiled to Nicopolis in Greece, was one of the leading Stoics. Stoicism is a moral doctrine which holds that human beings must conform themselves to the ways of the universe. The Stoics believed that human beings have no control over external events and that the only thing in a person's power is that person's response to events or outlook.

Epiphany
760; January 6, in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles

Epsilonics
138; Epsilons, 482 - the study of calculus

Eratosthenes (276-197 BC)
574; Greek astronomer who measured how the Earth curved between two cities in Egypt, and used basic goemetry to calculate the distance around the Earth (its circumference). He also kept a table of star locations and contributed to the field of mathematics. He found a method of finding all the prime numbers.

Erin, Daughter of
571; Erin = Ireland; an Irish girl

Escombe
634; town in South Africa, in Queensburg

Etesian
77; occurring every summer, cf French l'été: summer

30; son of Ives LeSpark and nephew of J. Wade LeSpark; the prefix "Ethel-" or "Aethel-" (early German: "noble") in names was fairly common in Britain in the Middle Ages, e.g. "Aethelmaer" (or "Ethelmer"), "Aethelmund," "Aethelred"; for example, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (9-12th c.) includes an alderman named Ethelmer who died in AD 982, and a Wiccian alderman, Ethelmund, in AD 800; or check this out!; "the University man" 260

Eucharist
404; Holy communion which symbolizes Christ's body transsubstantiating into bread, his blood into wine; Doctrine of Transsubstantiation, 404;

Euclid (c.330-c.275 BC)
294; Euclid is one of the most influential and best read mathematician of all time. His prize work, Elements, was the textbook of elementary geometry and logic up to the early twentieth century. For his work in the field, he is known as the father of geometry and is considered one of the great Greek mathematicians; 337; 484; Wikipedia

Euler, Leonhard (1707-83)
220; Hugely influential Swiss mathematician (studied under Bernoulli) before mathematics was treated as a separate discipline; extended Newtonian mechanics to hydrodynamics; three-body problem; Euler-Langrange equations of mechanics and the calculus of variations; calculus, differential equations, complex analysis.

Euphrenia, Aunt
103; Wicks Cherrycoke's sister

Euphroes
25; Euphroe is a nautical term for block of wood with holes in it, part of a crowfoot; derived from German Jungfrau ("young woman" or "mistress") or, still more likely, Dutch juffrouw = miss; 54

147; wife of Orpheus; 207; "like Eurydice, somehow to be redeem'd" 555; See Orpheus

Everybeet, Joseph
442; Quartz-scryer; 547

Ewing, Mr.
773

Exodus 3:14
486 (1st printing has Exodus 4:14, later ones correct this); See Bible

219; "distant Onlookers"; "Winters, long and Mortal and soon enough productive of Visitants from beneath the Ice" 531; "the transport of some unseen Influence" 547; Guardians, 662; "powerful Strangers" 649; "Others who are absent, pending their Return" 656; "Now and then, very much closer to the Earth, [Mason] begins to see Lights, moving, flickering, soon gone. [...] "They are going their Way, as we go ours." 724; "These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe but in Motion, [...] Once safely part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure" 726

Ezekiel
400

References

1. ↑ "Jeremiah Dixon and his Brother", by H.P. Hollis, Journal of the British Astronomy Association, v44, n8, June 1934, pp 294-9