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 Talk Talk - Communication terms
Category: General technical and industrial
Date & country: 28/05/2010, UK
Words: 18630


Welsh language
Member of the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken chiefly in the rural north and west of Wales. Spoken by 18.7% of the Welsh population, it is the strongest of the surviving Celtic languages. Welsh has been in decline in the face of English expansion since the accession of the Welsh Henry Tudor (as Henry VII) to the t...

weather area
Any of the divisions of the sea around the British Isles for the purpose of weather forecasting for shipping. The areas are used to indicate where strong or gale-force winds are expected

Western Australia
State of Australia, bounded on the north and west by the Indian Ocean, on the east by Northern Territory and South Australia, on the south by the Southern Ocean; area 2,525,500 sq km/975,100 sq mi; population (2001 est) 1,906,100. The state is thus sparsely populated, with very large almo...

weather
Click images to enlargeVariation of atmospheric conditions at any one place over a short period of time. Such conditions include humidity, precipitation, temperature, cloud cover, visibility, and wind. Weather differs from climate in that the latter is a composite of the average weather conditions of a locality or region ...

Weyden, Rogier van der
Netherlandish artist. He was the official painter to the city of Brussels from 1436. He produced portraits and religious paintings like The Last Judgement (c. 1450; Hôtel-Dieu, Beaune) in a refined and elegant realist style. He visited Italy (where his works were greatly admired) in 1450, and had a...

weightlessness
Click images to enlargeApparent loss in weight of a body in free fall. Astronauts in an orbiting spacecraft do not feel any weight because they are falling freely in the Earth's gravitational field (not because they are beyond the influence of Earth's gravity). The same phenomenon can be experienced in a falling l...

West Irian
Former name of Irian Jaya, a province of Indonesia

welwitschia
Woody plant found in the deserts of southwestern Africa. It has a long, water-absorbent taproot and can live for up to 100 years. (Genus Welwitschia mirabilis, order Gnetales.)

weapon
Any implement used for attack and defence, from simple clubs, spears, and bows and arrows in prehistoric times to machine guns and nuclear bombs in modern times. A revolution in warfare came with the invention of gunpowder and the development of cannons and shoulder-held guns. Many other weapons now exist, such as grenades, shells, torpedoes, r...

welding
Click images to enlargeJoining pieces of metal (or non-metal) at faces rendered plastic or liquid by heat or pressure (or both). The principal processes today are gas and arc welding, in which the heat from a gas flame or an electric arc melts the faces to be joined. Additional `filler metal` is usually adde...

Webster, John
English dramatist. His reputation rests on two tragedies, The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1613). Though both show the preoccupation with melodramatic violence and horror typical of the Jacobean revenge tragedy, they are also remarkable for their poetry and psychological in...

Weddell, James
British Antarctic explorer. In 1823, he reached 75°S latitude and 35°W longitude, in the Weddell Sea, which is named after him

Wedekind, Frank
German dramatist. He was a forerunner of expressionism with Frühlings Erwachen/The Awakening of Spring (1891), and Der Erdgeist/The Earth Spirit (1895) and its sequel Der Marquis von Keith. Die Büchse der Pandora/Pandora's Box (1904) was the source...

Westminster, City of
Inner borough of central Greater London, on the north bank of the River Thames between Kensington and the City of London. It encompasses Bayswater, Belgravia, Mayfair, Paddington, Pimlico, Soho, St John's Wood, and Westminster population (1991) 174,800

Weald, the
Area between the North and South Downs, England, a raised tract of forest 64 km/40 mi wide. It forms part of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire. Once thickly wooded, it is now an agricultural area producing fruit, hops, and vegetables. Crowborough and Wadhurst are the largest villages in the area. In the Middle Ages its timber and iron ore mad...

Webern, Anton
(Friedrich Wilhelm von) Austrian composer. He wrote spare, enigmatic miniatures combining a pastoral poetic with severe structural rigour. A Renaissance musical scholar, he became a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, whose 12-tone system he reinterpreted as abstract design in works such as the &l...

Webster, Noah
US lexicographer whose books on grammar and spelling and American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) standardized US English

Weir, Peter
(Lindsay) Australian film director who has worked much in the USA. His films, which range from melodramas to comedies, include the Australian Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1981), and the US The Year of Living Dangerously (...

Welty, Eudora Alice
US novelist and short-story writer. Her works reflect life in the American South and are notable for their creation of character and accurate rendition of local dialect. Her novels include Delta Wedding (1946), Losing Battles (1970), and The Optimist's Daughter (1972). Her Co...

Webb
English social reformers, writers, and founders of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1895. They were early members of the socialist Fabian Society, and advocates of a radical approach to social reform. They married in 1892. They argued for social insurance in their minority report (1909) of the Poor Law Commission, and w...

Webb, Philip Speakman
English architect and designer. He was a leading figure (along with Richard Norman Shaw and Charles Voysey) of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which was instrumental in the revival of English domestic architecture in the late 19th century. He mostly designed private houses, notably the Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent (1859), for William Morris

Webber, Andrew Lloyd
English composer of musicals; see Lloyd Webber

weber
SI unit of magnetic flux (the magnetic field strength multiplied by the area through which the field passes). It is named after German chemist Wilhelm Weber. One weber equals 108 maxwells. A change of flux at a uniform rate of one weber per second in an electrical coil with one turn produces an electromotive force of one volt...

Weldon, Fay
English novelist and dramatist. Her work deals with feminist themes, often in an ironic or comic manner. Novels include The Fat Woman's Joke (1967), Female Friends (1975), Remember Me (1976), Puffball (1980), The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (198...

West Bank
Area (5,879 sq km/2,270 sq mi) on the west bank of the River Jordan; population (1997 est) 1,873,500. Its main cities are Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus in the north; Jerusalem, Jericho, and Ramallah in the centre; and Bethlehem and Hebron in the south. The area was captured by Israel from Jordan in 1967; Jordan finally renounced an...

wet
In UK politics, a derogatory term used to describe a moderate or left-wing supporter of the Conservative Party, especially those who opposed the monetary or other hardline policies of its former leader Margaret Thatcher

Weddell Sea
Arm of the Southern Atlantic Ocean that cuts into the Antarctic continent southeast of Cape Horn; area 8,000,000 sq km/3,088,800 sq mi. Much of it is covered with thick pack ice for most of the year

West Bengal
State of northeast India; area 87,853 sq km/33,920 sq mi; population (2001 est) 80,221,200. The capital is Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). In spite of its relatively small size, the state is economically very productive. Often with the help of extensive irrigation and through intensive cultivation there are high yields of agricultural prod...

West Germany
See Germany, West

weightlifting
The sport of lifting the heaviest possible weight above one's head to the satisfaction of judges. In international competitions there are two standard lifts: snatch and jerk. In the snatch, the bar and weights are lifted from the floor to a position with the arms outstretched and above the head in one continuous movement. The arms must be l...

Wends
Northwestern Slavonic peoples who settled east of the rivers Elbe and Saale in the 6th–8th centuries. By the 12th century most had been forcibly Christianized and absorbed by invading Germans; a few preserved their identity and survive as the Sorbs of Lusatia (eastern Germany/Poland)

West, Nathanael
US writer. He is noted as an idiosyncratic black-humour parodist. His surrealist-influenced novels capture the absurdity and extremity of American life and the dark side of the American Dream. His most powerful novel, The Day of the Locust (1939), is a vivid exploration of the apocalyptic violence given release by the fan...

West Indian
Inhabitant of or native to the West Indies, or person of West Indian descent. The West Indies are culturally heterogeneous; in addition to the indigenous Carib and Arawak Indians, there are peoples of African, European, and Asian descent, as well as peoples of mixed descent

Wesley, Charles
English Methodist, brother of John Wesley and one of the original Methodists at Oxford. He became a principal preacher and theologian of the Wesleyan Methodists, and wrote some 6,500 hymns

Wear
River in northeast England; length 107 km/67 mi. From its source near Wearhead in the Pennines in County Durham, it flows eastwards along a narrow valley, Weardale, to Bishop Auckland and then northeast past Durham and Chester-le-Street, to meet the North Sea at Sunderland

weight
Gravitational force exerted on an object by another object. The weight of an object depends on its mass – the amount of material in it – and the strength of the local gravitational pull (the acceleration due to gravity). The Earth's gravitational pull decreases with height and consequently, an object weighs less at the top of a mounta...

Wembley Stadium
Sports ground in north London, England, completed in 1923 for the British Empire Exhibition 1924–25. It was the scene of the annual Football Association (FA) Cup final from 1923 to 2000, and again from 2007. The 1948 Olympic Games and many concerts, including the Live Aid concert of 1985, were held here. Adjacent to the main stadium are the We...

Weismann, August Friedrich Leopold
German biologist, one of the founders of genetics. He postulated that every living organism contains a special hereditary substance, the `germ plasm`, and in 1892 he proposed that changes to the body do not in turn cause an alteration of the genetic material. This `central dogma` of biology remains of vital importance to biologi...

weir
Low wall built across a river to raise the water level

West, Mae
US vaudeville, stage, and film actor. She wrote her own dialogue, setting herself up as a provocative sex symbol and the mistress of verbal innuendo. She appeared on Broadway in Sex (1926), Drag (1927), and Diamond Lil (1928), the last of which was the basis of the film (with Cary Grant) <...

welfare state
Political system under which the state (rather than the individual or the private sector) has responsibility for the welfare of its citizens, providing a guaranteed minimum standard of life, and insurance against the hazards of poverty, illness, and social deprivation. Welfare services include social security, which makes provision against interrup...

weak nuclear force
One of the four fundamental forces of nature, the other three being the gravitational force or gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the strong nuclear force. It causes radioactive beta decay and other subatomic reactions. The particles that carry the weak force are called weakons (or intermediate vector bosons) and comprise the positively and ne...

weakon
Member of a group of elementary particles

West Virginia
State in eastern central USA, bordered to the south and east by Virginia, to the north by Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and to the west by Ohio and Kentucky; area 62,359 sq km/24,078 sq mi; population (2000) 1,808,300; capital Charleston. West Virginia is hilly and rugged, hence i...

West Pakistan
A province of Pakistan

Western Front
Battle zone in World War I between Germany and its enemies France and Britain, extending as lines of trenches from Nieuport on the Belgian coast through Ypres, Arras, Albert, Soissons, and Rheims to Verdun, constructed by both Germany and the Allies. For over three years neither side advanced far fro...

Wei, Jingsheng
Chinese pro-democracy activist and essayist, imprisoned 1979–97 for attacking the Chinese communist system. He is regarded as one of China's most important political dissidents. In 1978 he joined the `Democracy Salon` movement of reformist dissidents in Beijing and published essays critical of the government in the journal &l...

wetland
Permanently wet land area or habitat. Wetlands include areas of marsh, fen, bog, flood plain, and shallow coastal areas. Wetlands are extremely fertile. They provide warm, sheltered waters for fisheries, lush vegetation for grazing livestock, and an abundance of wildlife. Estuaries and seaweed beds are more than 16 times as productive as the open o...

wealth
In economics, the wealth of a nation is its stock of physical capital, human capital, and net financial capital owned overseas. Physical capital is the stock of buildings, factories, offices, machines, roads, and so on. Human capital is the workforce; not just the number of workers, but also their stock of education and training which makes the...

Weights and Measures Act 1963
In Britain, act of Parliament which makes it illegal for businesses to give short weights or short measures to consumers. For example, it is illegal to sell a consumer half a pint of milk when it states on the carton that it contains one pint of milk. Trading standards departments are responsible for enforcing the Weights and Measures Act

Weigel, Helene
Austrian actor and director. She co-founded the Berliner Ensemble with her husband Bertolt Brecht in 1949 and took leading roles in productions of his plays, visiting London in 1956 and 1965. She took over direction of the Ensemble after Brecht's death in 1956

Western Cape
Province of the Republic of South Africa from 1994, formerly part of Cape Province; area 129,386 sq km/49,956 sq mi; population (2000 est) 4,178,600. The capital is Cape Town, which is also the legislative capital of the republic. Industries in the province include textiles, footwear, mot...

Web authoring tool
In computing, software for creating Web pages. The basic Web authoring tool is HTML, the source code that determines how a Web page is constructed and how it looks. Other programs, such as Java and VRML, can also be incorporated to enhance Web pages with animations and interactive features. Commercial authoring tools include Adobe Dreamweaver, NetO...

Web page
In computing, a hypertext document on the World Wide Web

Webmaster
In computing, system administrator for a server on the World Wide Web

Westman Islands
English name for Vestmannaeyjar, a small group of islands off the south coast of Iceland

West, American
Western frontier of the USA. Specifically the term refers to the period 1840–90, when the Pacific West and Great Plains to the west of the Mississippi were settled. This was the era of the gold rush, the homesteader, the cowboy, and the Plains Wars. Despite the resistance of the indigenous Plain...

West Berkshire
Unitary authority in southeast England, created in 1998 from part of the former county of Berkshire. Area 705 sq km/272 sq mi Towns and cities Newbury (administrative headquarters), Hungerford, Lambourn Features River Kennet; River Cambourn; Kennet and Avon Canal; Snelsmore Common Country Park covers 59 ha/ 146 acres including w...

welfare to work
Programme introduced by UK Labour Party to reduce unemployment, particularly among young people, by getting them off welfare into work. In January 1998, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced a `national crusade to end unemployment`, targeting at first the under-25s, and then older people. The cost of some £3.5 ...

Webcam
Any camera connected to the Internet, usually for the purpose of displaying an image on a Web page. Webcams are trained on a wide range of famous sights such as London's Tower Bridge. They have also been placed inside birds' nesting boxes, refrigerators, strip clubs, and bedrooms. What may ha...

Welsh Assembly
Devolved governmental body based in Cardiff; see National Assembly for Wales

Web site
Collection of Web pages belonging to the same company, organization, or individual. The first Web site page to be displayed on a browser is known as the home page. Sites designed to be a gateway to the rest of the World Wide Web are called portals. A Web site may be physically located on a local Web server or hosted by an Internet Service Provider....

Wexford, Battle of
Assault on the southern garrison town of Wexford, County Wexford, by Oliver Cromwell's Puritan Parliamentary army in October 1649, during Cromwell's Irish campaign (1649–50). A traitor among the Irish opened the town to the English army, and it was quickly taken. However, over 2,000 people were killed, including many civilians, in scen...

wedging
In ceramics, a technique in which clay is thoroughly kneaded before modelling to make it malleable and easy to use. Air pockets, which can cause pottery forms to crack on firing, are also removed during the process

weak verb
In grammar, conjugation of a verb that forms the past tense with either -ed, -d, or -t

Wesak
Theravada Buddhist festival celebrating the Buddha's birth, enlightenment, and passing into nirvana, all of which happened on the same day in different years. It falls in April/May at the full moon. Celebrations vary from country to country. In Sri Lanka, candles are lit to symbolize the Buddha's enlightenment. In Burma, the bodhi tree ...

Westall, Robert
English novelist. Many of his novels and stories share the setting of World War II; his first novel for young adults is The Machine Gunners (1975, Carnegie Medal), and its sequel is Fathom Five (1979). Echoes of War (1989) is a collection of short stories which focus on the aftermath of w...

weather forecast
Prediction for changes in the weather. The forecast is based on several different types of information from several sources. Weather stations are situated around the world, on land, in the air (on aircraft and air balloons), and in the sea (on ships, buoys, and oilrigs). Forecasters also use satellite photographs which show cloud patterns, and info...

weft and warp
Two sets of thread or yarn which make up a piece of woven fabric. During the weaving process the warp threads are stretched from the back to the front of the loom. The weft threads are inserted across the loom at right angles to the warp; the weft threads going under and over the warp threads. Traditionally, the weft is held in a shuttle and on...

white dwarf
Small, hot star, the last stage in the life of a star such as the Sun. White dwarfs make up 10% of the stars in the Galaxy; most have a mass 60% of that of the Sun, but only 1% of the Sun's diameter, similar in size to the Earth. Most have surface temperatures of 8,000°C/14,400°F or more, hotter than the Sun. Howev...

white spirit
Colourless liquid derived from petrol; it contains a mixture of hydrocarbons and is used as a solvent and in paints and varnishes

Whymper, Edward
English mountaineer. He made the first ascent of many Alpine peaks, including the Matterhorn 1865, and in the Andes scaled Chimborazo and other mountains

whooping cough
Acute infectious disease, seen mainly in children, caused by colonization of the air passages by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. There may be catarrh, mild fever, and loss of appetite, but the main symptom is violent coughing, associated with the sharp intake of breath that is the characteristic `whoop`, and often f...

Whittington, Dick
(Richard) English cloth merchant who was mayor of London 1397–98, 1406–07, and 1419–20. According to legend, he came to London as a poor boy with his cat when he heard that the streets were paved with gold and silver. His cat first appears in a play about the story in 1605

Whit Sunday
Another term for the Christian festival of Pentecost

Whitman, Walt(er)
US poet. He published Leaves of Grass (1855), which contains the symbolic `Song of Myself`. It used unconventional free verse (with no rhyme or regular rhythm) and scandalized the public by its frank celebration of sexuality. His poems were often set by composers such as ...

Whitlam,
(Edward) Australian politician, leader of the Labor Party 1967–78 and prime minister 1972–75. He ended conscription and Australia's military commitment in Vietnam, introduced the Medibank national health service, abolished university fees, expanded Aboriginal rights, attempted re...

White Sea
Gulf of the Arctic Ocean on the northwest coast of Russia, on which the port of Arkhangelsk stands; area 90,000 sq km/34,750 sq mi; average depth 60 m/200 ft, maximum depth 330 m/1,082 ft. There is a warship construction base, including nuclear submarines, at Severodvinsk. The North Dvina, Mezen, and Onega rivers flow into it, a...

White
Term denoting a counter-revolutionary, especially a member of the anticommunist forces in the Russian Civil War of 1918 to 1821. In this conflict, the Whites were led by former tsarist officers and supported by troops from foreign countries, but were eventually defeated by the Bolshevik Red Army. They were named after the royalist opponents of ...

Whitehouse, Mary
English media activist and campaigner for broadcasting standards. She founded the Clean Up TV campaign in 1964, which was renamed as the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, and was president of that organization until 1994. She campaigned to improve moral standards in the media, and in 1977 brought a successful private prosecution...

White House
Click images to enlargeOfficial residence of the president of the USA, in Washington, DC. It is a plain three-storeyed edifice of grey sandstone, built in Italian Renaissance style 1792–99 to the designs of Philadelphia architect James Hoban, who also restored the house after it was burned by the British in 1814&...

White Horse
Any of 17 hill figures in England, found particularly in the southern chalk downlands. The Uffington White Horse below Uffington Castle, a hill fort on the Berkshire Downs, is 110 m/360 ft long and probably a tribal totem of the late Bronze Age. The Westbury Horse on Bratton Hill, Wiltshire, was made in 1778 on the site of an older horse, said ...

Whitehorse
Capital of Yukon Territory, Canada, on the Yukon River; population (2001 est) 19,100 (Whitehorse has 70% of the population of Yukon). Situated at the junction of the Alaska and Klondike Highways, it is the centre of the region's mining and forestry industries, and an important transport focus, with air links to major Canadian and US cit...

White, Gilbert
English naturalist and cleric. He was the author of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), which records the flora and fauna of an area of Hampshire

Whitby, Synod of
Council summoned by King Oswy of Northumbria in 664, which decided to adopt the Roman rather than the Celtic form of Christianity for Britain

White, E(lwyn) B(rooks)
US writer. He was long associated with the New Yorker magazine and renowned for his satire, such as Is Sex Necessary? (1929; with the humorist James Thurber)

Whitby
Port and resort in North Yorkshire, northern England, on the North Sea coast, at the mouth of the River Esk, 32 km/20 mi northwest of Scarborough; population (2001) 13,600. Industries include tourism, boat building, fishing (particularly herring), and plastics. There are remains of a 13th-century abbey. Captain James Cook served his app...

Whistler, Rex
(Reginald John) English artist, illustrator, and stage designer. He painted fanciful murals, for example In Pursuit of Rare Meats (1926–27) in the restaurant of the Tate Gallery, London. His illustrations include editions of Gulliver's Travels and...

Whistler, James Abbott McNeill
US painter and etcher. Active in London from 1859, he was a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement. Influenced by Japanese prints, he painted riverscapes and portraits that show subtle composition and colour harmonies, for example Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother (1871; Musée d...

whist
Card game for four, predecessor of bridge, in which the partners try to win a majority of the 13 tricks (the highest card played being the winner of the trick)

whip
In UK politics, the member of Parliament who ensures the presence of colleagues in the party when there is to be a vote in Parliament at the end of a debate. The written appeal sent by the whips to MPs is also called a whip; this letter is underlined once, twice, or three times to indicate its importance. A three-line whip is the most urgen...

Whig Party
(UK) In the UK, predecessor of the Liberal Party. The name was first used of rebel Covenanters and then of those who wished to exclude James II from the English succession (as a Roman Catholic). They were in power continuously from 1714 to 1760 and pressed for industrial and commercial develop...

Wheeler,
(Robert Eric) English archaeologist. After a number of distinguished excavations in Britain, he was director general of archaeology in India 1944–48, and later adviser to the government of Pakistan. He excavated sites of the forgotten Indus Valley civilization, which flourished in the lat...

Wharton, Edith Newbold
US novelist. Her work, known for its subtlety and form and influenced by her friend Henry James, was mostly set in New York society. It includes The House of Mirth (1905), which made her reputation; the grim, uncharacteristic novel of New England Ethan Frome (1911); The Custom of the Country<...

whitefish
Any of various freshwater fishes, genera Coregonus and Prosopium, of the salmon family, found in lakes and rivers of North America and Eurasia. They include the whitefish C. clupeaformis and cisco C. artedi

whiting
Predatory fish Merlangius merlangus common in shallow sandy northern European waters. It grows to 70 cm/2.3 ft

whitebait
Any of the fry (young) of various silvery fishes, especially herring. It is also the name for a Pacific smelt Osmerus mordax

whippet
Breed of dog resembling a small greyhound. It grows to 56 cm/22 in at the shoulder, and 9 kg/20 lb in weight

whippoorwill
North American nightjar Caprimulgus vociferus, order Caprimulgiformes, so called from its cry during the nights of its breeding season. It is about 25 cm/10 in long, mottled tawny brown in colour, with a white collar on the throat, and long, stiff bristles at the base of the bill

whelk
Any of various families of large marine snails with a thick spiral shell, especially the family Buccinidae. Whelks are scavengers, and also eat other shellfish. The largest grow to 40 cm/16 in long. Tropical species, such as the conches, can be very colourful