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


graphics tablet
In computing, an input device in which a stylus or cursor is moved, by hand, over a flat surface. The computer can keep track of the position of the stylus, so enabling the operator to input drawings or diagrams into the computer. A graphics tablet is often used with a form overlaid for users to mark...

Great Yarmouth
Holiday resort and port in Norfolk, eastern England, at the mouth of the River Yare, 32 km/20 mi east of Norwich; population (2001) 58,000. It is Norfolk's largest port. Formerly a herring-fishing port, it is now a container port and a base for North Sea oil and gas. Other industries include shipbuilding, tourism and leisure, food p...

Grozny
Capital of Chechnya and of the former Soviet republic of Checheno-Ingush; population (1996) 388,000. Situated on the Sunzha River, a tributary of the Terek, it is the biggest city of the Caucasian foothills. From the late 19th century, it became a major oil centre with pipelines to the Caspian Sea at Makhachkala, the Black Sea at Tuapse, an...

gross national product
Measure of a country's total economic activity, or the wealth of the country. GNP is usually assessed quarterly or yearly, and is defined as the total value of all goods and services produced by firms owned by the country concerned. It is measured as the gross domestic product plus income earned by domestic residents from foreign investments, m...

gross domestic product
Value of all final goods and services produced within a country within a given time period, usually one year. GDP thus includes the production of foreign-owned firms within the country, but excludes the income from domestically-owned firms located abroad. Intermediate goods, such as plastic and steel, are not included, in order to avoid dou...

Gropius, Walter Adolf
German architect, in the USA from 1937. He was an early exponent of the international style, defined by glass curtain walls, cubic blocks, and unsupported corners. A founder director of the Bauhaus school in Weimar 1919–28, he advocated teamwork in design and artistic standards in industrial production. He was responsible for the new Bauhaus p...

Groningen
(province) Most northerly province of the Netherlands, located on the Ems estuary and also including two of the innermost West Friesian Islands (both uninhabited), bounded to the north by the North Sea, to the south by the province of Drenthe, to the east by Germany, and to the west by Friesla...

Gromyko, Andrei Andreyevich
President of the USSR 1985–88. As ambassador to the USA from 1943, he took part in the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences; as United Nations representative 1946–49, he exercised the Soviet veto 26 times. He was foreign minister 1957–85. It was Gromyko who formally nominated Mikhail Gorbachev as Communist Party leader in 1985

Grimsby
Fishing port and administrative headquarters of North East Lincolnshire, England, on the River Humber, 24 km/15 mi southeast of Hull; population (2001) 87,600. It declined in the 1970s when Icelandic waters were closed to British fishing fleets. Chemicals and processed foods are manufactured, and marine-related industries and tourism ar...

Grimm's law
In linguistics, the rule (formulated 1822 by Jakob Grimm) by which certain prehistoric sound changes have occurred in the consonants of Indo-European languages: for example Latin p became English and German f sound, as in pater – father, Vater. Such correspondences show the kinsh...

Grimaldi, Joseph
English clown. Born in London, he was the son of an Italian actor. He appeared on the stage at two years old. He gave his name `Joey` to all later clowns, and excelled as `Mother Goose`, performed at Covent Garden in 1806

Grimm brothers
Jakob (Ludwig Karl) (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), philologists and collectors of German fairy tales such as `Hansel and Gretel` and `Rumpelstiltskin`. Joint compilers of an exhaustive dictionary of German, they saw the study of language and the collecting of folk tales as strands in a single enterprise. Encourag...

Grieg, Edvard
(Hagerup) Norwegian nationalist composer. Much of his music is written on a small scale, particularly his songs, dances, sonatas, and piano works, and strongly identifies with Norwegian folk music. Among his orchestral works are the piano concerto in A minor (1869) and the incidental music for...

Grey, Edward
British Liberal politician, MP for Berwick on Tweed 1885–1916, nephew of Charles Grey. As foreign secretary 1905–16 he negotiated an entente with Russia in 1907, and backed France against Germany in the Agadir Incident of 1911. He published his memoirs, Twenty-Five Years in 1925. Baronet 1882, Viscount 1916

Grey,
(Pearl) US author of Westerns. He wrote more than 80 books, including Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), and was primarily responsible for the creation of the Western as a literary genre

Grey, Charles
British Whig politician. He entered Parliament in 1786, and in 1806 became First Lord of the Admiralty, and foreign secretary soon afterwards. As prime minister 1830–34, he carried the Great Reform Bill of 1832 that reshaped the parliamentary representative system and the act abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833. He succeed...

Gretna Green
Village in Dumfries and Galloway region, Scotland, where runaway marriages were legal after they were banned in England in 1754; all that was necessary was the couple's declaration, before witnesses, of their willingness to marry. From 1856 Scottish law required at least one of the parties to be resident in Scotland for a minimum of 21 days...

Grenoble
Alpine city and administrative centre of the Isère département, Rhône-Alpes region, southeast France, situated on the rivers Isère and Drac; population (1999) 153,400, conurbation 419,500. Industries include electrometallurgy, engineering, nuclear research, hydroelectric power, computers, technology, c...

Gregory of Tours, St
French Christian bishop of Tours from 573, author of a History of the Franks. His feast day is 17 November

Grenadines
Chain of about 600 small islands in the Caribbean Sea, part of the group known as the Windward Islands. They are divided between St Vincent and Grenada

Green Party
Political party aiming to `preserve the planet and its people`, based on the premise that continual economic growth is unsustainable. The leaderless party structure reflects a general commitment to decentralization. Green parties sprang up in Western Europe in the 1970s and in Eastern Europe from 1988. Parties in different countries are l...

Greene,
(Henry) English writer. His novels of guilt, despair, and penitence are set in a world of urban seediness or political corruption in many parts of the world. They include Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matte...

Great Wall of China
Click images to enlargeContinuous defensive wall stretching from western Gansu to the Gulf of Liaodong (2,250 km/1,450 mi). It was once even longer. It was built under the Qin dynasty from 214 BC to prevent incursions by the Turkish and Mongol peoples and extended westwards by the Han dynasty. Some 8 m/25 ft high,...

Great Schism
In European history, the period 1378–1417 in which rival popes had seats in Rome and in Avignon; it was ended by the election of Martin V during the Council of Constance 1414–17

Great Lake
Australia's largest freshwater lake, 1,030 m/3,380 ft above sea level, in Tasmania; area 114 sq km/44 sq mi. It is used for hydroelectric power and is a tourist attraction

Great Sandy Desert
Desert in northern Western Australia; 415,000 sq km/160,000 sq mi. It is also the name of an arid region in southern Oregon, USA

Great Dividing Range
Eastern Australian mountain range, extending 3,700 km/2,300 mi N–S from Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, to Victoria. It includes the Carnarvon Range, Queensland, which has many Aboriginal cave paintings, the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, and the Australian Alps, and ends southwards beyond Bass Strait as the central uplands of Tasmani...

Great Britain
Official name for England, Scotland, and Wales, and the adjacent islands (except the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) from 1603, when the English and Scottish crowns were united under James I of England (James VI of Scotland). With Northern Ireland it forms the United Kingdom

Great Australian Bight
Broad bay of the Indian Ocean in southern Australia, notorious for storms. It was discovered by a Dutch navigator, Captain Thyssen, in 1627. The coast was charted by the English explorer Captain Matthew Flinders 1802

Graz
Capital of Styria province, and second-largest city in Austria, situated on the River Mur, 150 km/93 mi southwest of Vienna; population (2003 est) 219,500. Industries include engineering and the manufacture of chemicals, iron, steel, automobiles, precision and optical instruments, paper, textiles, and leather. Tourism is also important....

Gray, Thomas
English poet. His Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), a dignified contemplation of death, was instantly acclaimed and is one of the most quoted poems in the English language. Other poems include Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1747), The Progress of Poesy, and Th...

Grand Canal
The world's longest canal, running north from Hangzhou to near Beijing, China; 1,600 km/1,000 mi long and 30–61 m/100–200 ft wide. The earliest section was completed in 486 BC; the central section linking the Chang Jiang and Huang He rivers was built from AD 605 to 610; and the northern section was built between 12...

Granada
(city, Spain) Capital of Granada province in Andalusia, southern Spain, situated to the north of the Sierra Nevada mountain range on the confluence of the rivers Genil and Darro; population (2001 est) 243,300. Products include tex...

gram
Metric unit of mass; one-thousandth of a kilogram

Grampian Mountains
Mountain range in north central Scotland that includes Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles at 1,343 m/4,406 ft, and the Cairngorm Mountains, which include the second highest mountain, Ben Macdhui 1,309 m/4,295 ft. The region includes Aviemore, a winter holiday and sports cent...

Graces
In Greek mythology, three goddesses (Aglaia, Euphrosyne, Thalia), daughters of Zeus and Hera, personifications of pleasure, charm, and beauty; the inspirers of the arts and the sciences

Gracchus
In ancient Rome, two brothers who worked for agrarian reform. As tribune (magistrate) 133 BC, Tiberius tried to redistribute land away from the large slave-labour farms in order to benefit the poor as well as increase the number of those eligible for military service by providing them with the miniumum property requirement. He was murdered by a...

Graaf, Regnier de
Dutch physician and anatomist who discovered the ovarian follicles, which were later named Graafian follicles. He named the ovaries and gave exact descriptions of the testicles. He was also the first to isolate and collect the secretions of the pancreas and gall bladder

Great Malvern
English spa town in Worcester, on the east side of the Malvern Hills, which extend for about 16 km/10 mi and have their high point in Worcester Beacon 425 m/1,395 ft; population (2001) 35,600. The Malvern Festival (1929–39), associated with the playwright G B Shaw and the composer Ed...

Grünewald, Matthias
German painter, architect, and engineer. His altarpiece at Isenheim, southern Alsace, (1515, Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France), with its grotesquely tortured figure of Jesus and its radiant Resurrection, is his most important work. During 1508–1514 he was painter to the archbishop of Mainz in Aschaffenburg, and after 1514 ...

Grotius, Hugo
Dutch jurist and politician. His book De Jure Belli et Pacis/On the Law of War and Peace (1625) is the foundation of international law. Grotius held that the rules governing human and international relations are founded on human nature, which is rational and social. These rules constitute a natural law binding on citizens, ru...

Graubünden
Canton in Switzerland, the largest and most sparsely populated canton of the country; area 7,106 sq km/2,743 sq mi; population (2003 est) 183,700. The capital is Chur. The inner valleys are the highest in Europe, and the main sources of the River Rhine rise here. It also includes the resort of Davos and, in the Upper Engadine, St Moritz...

griffin
Mythical monster, the supposed guardian of hidden treasure, with the body, tail, and hind legs of a lion, and the head, forelegs, and wings of an eagle, though in classical times all four legs were those of a lion

Grey, Lady Jane
Queen of England for nine days, 10–19 July 1553, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII. She was married in 1553 to Lord Guildford Dudley (died 1554), son of the Duke of Northumberland. Edward VI was persuaded by Northumberland to set aside the claims to the throne of his sisters Mary and Elizabeth. When Edward died on 6 July 1553, Jane relu...

Green Mountain Boys
In US history, irregular troops who fought to protect the Vermont part of what was then New Hampshire colony from land claims made by neighbouring New York. In the American Revolution they captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British. Their leader was Ethan Allen (1738–1789), who was later captured by the British. Vermont declared itself an inde...

Greenland Sea
Area of the Arctic Ocean between Spitsbergen and Greenland, to the north of the Norwegian Sea; area 1,200,000 sq km/460,000 sq mi, mainly ice-bound in winter. It consists of two large basins, reaching depths of 4,850 m/15,900 ft, separated by the West Jan Mayen Rise

Greek literature
Literature of Greece, ancient and modern. Ancient The Archaic period of ancient Greek literature (8th century–c. 480 BC) begins with Homer, reputed author of the epic narrative poems the Iliad and Odyssey, but there is evidence that parts of the Homeric epics embody an oral literary trad...

Greek architecture
Click images to enlargeThe architecture of ancient Greece is the base for virtually all architectural developments in Europe. The Greeks invented the entablature, which allowed roofs to be hipped (inverted V-shape), and perfected the design of arcades with support columns. There were three styles, or orders, of column...

great circle
Circle drawn on a sphere such that the diameter of the circle is a diameter of the sphere. On the Earth, all meridians of longitude are half great circles; among the parallels of latitude, only the Equator is a great circle. The shortest route between two points on the Earth's surface is along the arc of a great circle. These are used exten...

Great Barrier Reef
Chain of coral reefs and islands about 2,000 km/1,250 mi long, in the Coral Sea, off the east coast of Queensland, Australia, about 16–241 km/10–150 mi offshore. The Great Barrier Reef is made up of 3,000 individual reefs, and is believed to be the world's largest living organis...

Graves, Robert
(Ranke) English poet and writer. He was severely wounded on the Somme in World War I, and his frank autobiography Goodbye to All That (1929) contains outstanding descriptions of the war. Collected Poems (1975) contained those verses he wanted preserved, so...

Grass, Günter Wilhelm
German writer. The grotesque humour and socialist feeling of his novels Die Blechtrommel/The Tin Drum (1959) and Der Butt/The Flounder (1977) are also characteristic of many of his poems. Deeply committed politically, Grass's works contain a mixture of scurrility, humour, tragedy, satire, and marvel...

Grant, Ulysses S(impson)
US Civil War general in chief for the Union and 18th president of the USA 1869–77. As a Republican president, he carried through a liberal Reconstruction policy in the South. He failed to suppress extensive political corruption within his own party and cabinet, which tarnished the reputation of his second term

Grant, Duncan
(James Corrowr) Scottish painter and designer. A pioneer of post-Impressionism in the UK, he was influenced by Paul Cezanne and the Fauves, and became a member of the Bloomsbury Group. He lived with the painter Vanessa Bell from about 1914 and worked with her on decorative projects, such a...

Grand National
Handicap horse-race held in March or April at Aintree, Liverpool, England. The most famous steeplechase race in the world, it was inaugurated in 1839 as the Grand Liverpool Steeple Chase, adopting its present name in 1847. The current course is 7,242 m/4.5 mi long, with 30 formidable jumps. The highest jump is the Chair at 156 cm/5 ft 2...

Grand Canyon
Click images to enlargeGorge in northwestern Arizona, USA, containing the Colorado River. It is 350 km/217 mi long, 6–29 km/4–18 mi wide, and reaches depths of over 1.7 km/1.1 mi. The gorge cuts through a multicoloured series of rocks – mainly limestones, sandstones, and shales, and ranging in a...

Grahame, Kenneth
Scottish-born writer. The early volumes of sketches of childhood, The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), were followed by his masterpiece The Wind in the Willows (1908) which became a children's classic. Begun as a bedtime story for his son, it is a charming tale of life on the ...

granite
Click images to enlargeCoarse-grained intrusive igneous rock, typically consisting of the minerals quartz, feldspar, and biotite mica. It may be pink or grey, depending on the composition of the feldspar. Granites are chiefly used as building materials. Granite is formed when magma (molten rock) is forced between othe...

graphite
Blackish-grey, soft, flaky, crystalline form of carbon. It is used as a lubricant and as the active component of pencil lead. Graphite, like diamond and fullerene, is an allotrope of carbon. The carbon atoms are strongly bonded together in sheets, but the bonds between the sheets are weak, allowing the layers to slide over one another. Graphite...

Greece, ancient
Click images to enlargeAncient civilization that flourished 2,500 years ago on the shores of the Ionian and Aegean Seas (modern Greece and the west coast of Turkey). Although its population never exceeded 2 million, ancient Greece made great innovations in philosophy, politics, science, architecture, and the arts, and Gre...

Greenland
World's largest island, a dependency of Denmark, lying between the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans east of North America; area 2,175,600 sq km/840,000 sq mi; population (2003 est) 56,500, comprising Inuit (Ammassalik Eskimoan), Danish, and other Europeans. The capital is Godthåb...

Gresham, Thomas
English merchant financier who founded and paid for the Royal Exchange and propounded Gresham's law: `bad money tends to drive out good money from circulation`. He also founded Gresham College in London. The college was provided for by his will, and among the professorships was one for music, which has continued to the present day...

gravure
One of the three main printing methods, in which printing is done from a plate etched with a pattern of recessed cells in which the ink is held. The greater the depth of a cell, the greater the strength of the printed ink. Gravure plates are expensive to make, but the process is economical for high-volume printing and reproduces illustrations w...

grid
(technology) Network by which electricity is generated and distributed over a region or country. It contains many power stations and switching centres and allows, for example, high demand in one area to be met by surplus power generated in another. The term is also used for any grating system,...

GRP
Abbreviation for glass-reinforced plastic

gravity
Click images to enlargeForce of attraction that arises between objects by virtue of their masses. The larger the mass of an object the more strongly it attracts other objects. On Earth, gravity causes objects to have weight; it accelerates objects (at 9.806 metres per second per second/32.174 ft per second per sec...

grammar school
In the UK, secondary school catering for children of high academic ability, about 20% of the total, usually measured by the Eleven Plus examination. Most grammar schools have now been replaced by comprehensive schools. In the USA the term is sometimes used for a primary school (also called elementary school)

Greek art
Click images to enlargeThe sculpture, painting (almost entirely vase decoration), mosaic, and crafts of ancient Greece. It is usually divided into three periods: archaic (late 8th century–480 BC), showing Egyptian influence; classical (480–323 BC), characterized by dignified and eloquent realism; and...

Graham, Thomas
Scottish chemist who laid the foundations of physical chemistry (the branch of chemistry concerned with changes in energy during a chemical transformation) by his work on the diffusion of gases and liquids. Graham's law (1829) states that the diffusion rate of a gas is inversely proportional to the square root of its density. His work on colloi...

Gregorian chant
Any of a body of plainsong choral chants associated with Pope Gregory the Great (540–604), which became standard in the Roman Catholic Church

Greenpeace
International environmental pressure group, founded in Vancouver, Canada, in 1971, with a policy of non-violent direct action backed by scientific research. During a protest against French atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific in 1985, its ship Rainbow Warrior was sunk by French intelligence agents, killing a crew ...

gravel
Coarse sediment consisting of pebbles or small fragments of rock, originating in the beds of lakes and streams or on beaches. Gravel is quarried for use in road building, railway ballast, and for an aggregate in concrete. It is obtained from quarries known as gravel pits, where it is often found mixed with sand or clay. Some gravel deposits also co...

gray
SI unit of absorbed radiation dose. It replaces the rad (1 Gy equals 100 rad), and is defined as the dose absorbed when one kilogram of matter absorbs one joule of ionizing radiation. Different types of radiation cause different amounts of damage for the same absorbed dose; the SI unit of dose equivalent is the sievert

Green Paper
Publication issued by a British government department setting out various aspects of a matter on which legislation is contemplated, and inviting public discussion and suggestions. In due course it may be followed by a White Paper, giving details of proposed legislation. The first Green Paper was published in 1967

Great Leap Forward
Change in the economic policy of the People's Republic of China introduced by Mao Zedong under the second five-year plan of 1958 to 1962. The aim was to achieve rapid and simultaneous agricultural and industrial growth through the creation of large new agro-industrial communes. The inefficient and poorly planned allocation of state reso...

Grand Remonstrance
Petition passed by the English Parliament in November 1641 that listed all the alleged misdeeds of Charles I – `the evils under which we have now many years suffered`. It then went on to blame those it thought responsible – the `Jesuited papists`, the bishops and Charles's councillors and courtiers. It demanded par...

Greece
Click images to enlargeCountry in southeast Europe, comprising the southern part of the Balkan peninsula, bounded to the north by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria, to the northwest by Albania, to the northeast by Turkey, to the east by the Aegean Sea, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, and to the...

Grenada
Click images to enlargeIsland country in the Caribbean, the southernmost of the Windward Islands. Government Grenada is a multiparty parliamentary democracy. Its constitution, which dates from full independence in 1974, provides for a system modelled on that of Britain, with a resident governor general, representing the B...

green belt
Area surrounding a large city, officially designated not to be built on but preserved where possible as open space for agricultural and recreational use. In the UK the first green belts were established from 1938 around conurbations such as London in order to prevent urban sprawl. New towns were set up to take the overspill population. The term gen...

Gregory
(I) Pope from 590 who asserted Rome's supremacy and exercised almost imperial powers. In 596 he sent St Augustine to England. He introduced the choral Gregorian chant into the liturgy. His feast day is 12 March

Gregory VII
Pope from 1073 and Catholic saint. He was chief minister to several popes before his election to the papacy, and was one of the great ecclesiastical reformers. He aroused the imperial wrath by prohibiting the abuse of investiture, and was declared deposed by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in 1076. His feast day is 25 May. He was canonized in 1606....

Gregory XIII
Pope from 1572 who introduced the reformed Gregorian calendar, still in use, in which a century year is not a leap year unless it is divisible by 400

greenhouse effect
Phenomenon of the Earth's atmosphere by which solar radiation, trapped by the Earth and re-emitted from the surface as long-wave infrared radiation, is prevented from escaping by various gases (the `greenhouse gases`) in the air. These gases trap heat because they readily absorb...

Great Trek
In South African history, the movement of 12,000–14,000 Boer (Dutch) settlers from Cape Colony in 1835 and 1845 to escape British rule. They established republics in Natal and the Transvaal. It is seen by many white South Africans as the main event in the founding of the present republic and was cited as a justification for whites-only rul...

Great Exhibition
World fair held in Hyde Park, London, UK, in 1851, proclaimed by its originator Prince Albert as `the Great Exhibition of the Industries of All Nations`. In practice, it glorified British manufacture: over half the 100,000 exhibits were from Britain or the British Empire. Over 6 million people attended the exhibition. The exhibition h...

green revolution
In agriculture, the change in methods of arable farming instigated in the 1940s and 1950s in countries of the developing world. The intent was to provide more and better food for their populations, albeit with a heavy reliance on chemicals and machinery. It was abandoned by some countries in the 1980s. Much of the food produced was exported as cash...

Grace, W(illiam) G(ilbert)
English cricketer. By profession a doctor, he became the most famous sportsman in Victorian England. A right-handed batsman, he began playing first-class cricket at the age of 16, scored 152 runs in his first Test match, and scored the first triple century in 1876. Career highlights Test cricket (1880–99) appearances: 22; runs&...

Gretzky, Wayne
Canadian ice-hockey player, widely regarded as the best in the history of the National Hockey League (NHL). Gretzky played with the Edmonton Oilers 1979–88, the Los Angeles Kings 1988–96, and the New York Rangers 1997–1999. He took just 11 years to break the NHL scoring record of 1,850 goals (accumulated by Gordie Howe over 26 ye...

greyhound racing
Spectator sport that has a number of greyhounds pursuing a mechanical hare around a circular or oval track. The mechanical hare was invented in 1912 and the first track was opened in the USA in 1919. It is popular in the UK, USA, and Australia, attracting much on- and off-course betting

grand opera
Type of opera without any spoken dialogue (unlike the opéra-comique), as performed at the Paris Opéra, France, in the 1820s to 1880s. Grand operas were extremely long (five acts), and included incidental music and a ballet. Composers of grand opera include Daniel Auber, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Ludovic Halévy;...

Grange Movement
In US history, a farmers' protest in the South and Midwest states against economic hardship and exploitation. The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, formed in 1867, was a network of local organizations, employing cooperative practices and advocating `granger` laws. The movement petered out in the late 1870s, to be superseded...

Greenbacker
In US history, a supporter of an alliance of agrarian and industrial organizations 1874–88, known as the Greenback Labor Party, which campaigned for currency inflation by increasing the paper dollars (`greenbacks`) in circulation. In 1880 the party's presidential nominee polled only 300,000 votes; the movement was later super...

granthi
In Sikhism, the man or woman who reads from the Guru Granth Sahib (holy book) during the service, which he or she may lead

Gris, Juan
Spanish painter, one of the earliest cubists. He developed a distinctive geometrical style, often strongly coloured. He experimented with paper collage and made designs for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1922–23). Gris went to Paris 1906, meeting Picasso, whose disciple he became, and began to paint about 1910. First trained as an engin...

Great Bear Lake
Freshwater lake in the western Northwest Territories, Canada, on the Arctic Circle; area 31,153 sq km/12,028 sq mi; depth 413 m/1,356 ft. It is the largest lake in Canada

Great Slave Lake
Freshwater lake in the Northwest Territories, Canada; area 28,450 sq km/10,980 sq mi. It is about 480 km/298 mi long and 100 km/62 mi wide, and is the deepest lake (615 m/2,020 ft) in North America. The lake forms two large bays, McLeod's Bay in the north and Christie's Bay in the south. It is connected with Artillery La...

grand slam
In tennis, the winning of four major tournaments in one season: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. In golf, it is also winning the four major tournaments in one season: the Masters, the US Open, the British Open, and the US PGA Championship. In baseball, a grand slam is a home run with runners on all the bases...

Graf, Steffi
German lawn-tennis player. She brought Martina Navratilova's long reign as the world's number-one female player to an end. In 1988 she won the Grand Slam of singles titles, as well as Olympic gold. In June 1999 she won her sixth French Open singles title, and her 22nd Grand Slam singles in total. Only Chris Evert, with seven victori...

Grossglockner
Highest mountain in Austria, rising to 3,797 m/12,457 ft in the Hohe Tauern range of the Tirol Alps, on the borders of Carinthia, Salzburg, and the Tirol. It was first climbed in 1800

graffiti
Inscriptions or drawings carved, scratched, or drawn on public surfaces, such as walls, fences, or public-transport vehicles. Graffiti art rose out of the urban street culture of New York in the 1970s, and was later assimilated into commercial art forms. Tagging is the act of writing an individual logo on surfaces with spray paint or large felt...