Oe
Webster's Dictionary 1913
Word of the Day: Catachrestical
The colorless porous framework, or stroma, of red blood corpuscles from which the zooid, or hemoglobin and other substances of the corpuscles, may be dissolved out.
The various relations of animals and plants to one another and to the outer world.
See Economical.
See Economics.
See Ecumenical.
A swelling from effusion of watery fluid in the cellular tissue beneath the skin or mucous membrance; dropsy of the subcutaneous cellular tissue.
OECONOMICAL , OECONOMY , OEDEMATOUS , OESOPHAGUS . [ See Economical , Economy, Edematous, Esophagus.]
Oedenburg
Encyclopedia Britannica
OEDENBURG (Hungarian, Sopron), one of the oldest and most prepossessing towns in Hungary, the chief place of a district of its own name, lies 3 miles to the west of the Lake of Neusiedl and 35 miles to the south-south-east of Vienna. It possesses several churches (one of which was built with the contents of a Turkish military chest found buried here), three convents, a Protestant. lyceum with a theological department, a Roman Catholic gymnasium, several other schools and charitable institutions, a museum, and a theatre. The inhabitants, most of whom are of German descent, are mainly engaged in making wine, of which the district yields a quality little inferior to Tokay. The crystallized fruits of Oedenburg form a well-known article of commerce; and a trade in grain and manufactures of beetroot-sugar, starch, and cloth are also carried on. Large cattle-markets are held here. The population in 1880 was 23,222.
Oedenburg, the Roman station Sopronium, was created a royal free town in the 11th century in return for help afforded to the king of Hungary against the Bulgarians. In 1619 it was pillaged by Bethlen Gabor. At a diet held here in 1681 the Hungarian Protestants presented the so-called “Oedenburg Articles," claiming the restitution of their churches and estates. The province of Oedenburg is rich in corn, fruit, cattle, and coal....
OeDIPUS, a Theban hero, is placed by genealogists among the descendants of Cadmus. His father Laius ordered him to be exposed as soon as he was born; he grew up ignorant of his parentage, and meeting his father once in a narrow way he quarrelled with him and slew him. The country was ravaged by a monster, the Sphinx; Oedipus by his cunning solved the riddle that the Sphinx proposed to its victims, freed the country, and married his own mother, Jocaste, or, as Homer calls her, Epicaste. In the Odyssey it is said that the gods disclosed the impiety. Epicaste hanged herself, and Oedipus lived as king in Thebes tormented by the Erinnyes of his mother. In the tragic poets the tale takes a different form. Oedipus fulfils an ancient prophecy in* killing his father; he is the blind instrument in the hands of fate. The further treatment of the tale by Aeschylus is unknown. Sophocles describes in his Oedipus the King how Oedipus was resolved to pursue to the end the mystery of the death of Laius, and thus unravelled the dark tale, and in horror put out his own eyes. The sequel of the tale is told in Oedipus at Colonus. Banished from the land by his sons, he is tended by the loving care of his daughters. He comes to Attica and dies in the grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, in his death welcomed and pardoned by the fate which had pursued him throughout his life. This view of the myth, which reads in it a parable of the mystery of life, of the overwhelming might of fate and the weakness of man, of the final reconciliation of discord in death, is due to the tragic poets, is unknown in the epic poets, and is still more foreign to the primitive mythic form, where Oedipus and his father embody the vicissitudes of the annual life of nature: the son, the young year, slays his father, the old year, is wedded to his own mother, but finally loses his eyes, his light, and his life. The winter king is a god who slays his own father; this is a trait that occurs time after time in mythology.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 17, p. 730
[599 words — estimated reading time: 4 minutes]
[599 words — estimated reading time: 4 minutes]
OehlenschlÄger
Encyclopedia Britannica
OEHLENSCHLÄGER, Adam Gottlob (1779-1850), the greatest of modern Danish poets, was born in Vesterbro, a suburb of Copenhagen, on the 14th of November 1779. His father, a Schleswiger by birth, was at that time organist to, and later on became keeper of, the royal palace of Frederiksberg; he was a very brisk and cheerful man. The poet’s mother, on the other hand, who was partly German by extraction, suffered from depressed spirits, which afterwards deepened into melancholy madness. Adam and his sister Sofia were allowed their own way throughout their childhood, and were taught nothing, except to read and write, until their twelfth year. At the age of nine Adam began to make fluent verses. Three years later, while walking in Frederiksberg Gardens, he attracted the notice of the poet Edvard Storm, and the result of the conversation was that he received a nomination to the college called “Posterity’s High School,” an important institution of which Storm was the principal. Storm himself taught the class of Scandinavian mythology, and thus Oehlenschläger received his earliest bias towards the poetical religion of his ancestors. Most other branches of study the boy continued to neglect, and thought most about the romances and dramas which he proposed to write. He was confirmed in 1795, and was to have been apprenticed to a tradesman in Copenhagen. To his great delight there was a hitch in the preliminaries, and he returned to his father’s house. He now, in his eighteenth year, suddenly took up study with great zeal, but soon again abandoned his books for the stage, where a small position was offered him. In 1797 he actually made his appearance on the boards in several successive parts, but soon discovered that he possessed no real histrionic talent, even though he ...was trained by the great actor Michael Rosing. The brothers Oersted, the eminent savants, with whom he had formed an intimacy fruitful of profit to him, persuaded him to quit the stage, and in 1800 he entered the university of Copenhagen as a student. He was doomed, however, to disturbance in his studies, first from the death of his mother, next from his inveterate tendency towards poetry, and finally from the attack of the English upon Copenhagen in April 1801, which, however, inspired a dramatic sketch which is the first thing of the kind by Oehlenschläger that we possess. His promise was already widely felt, and, even in 1800, Baggesen, in departing for Germany, had publicly invested the youth with the laurel that he himself was resigning. It was in the summer of 1802, when Oehlenschläger had an old Scandinavian romance, as well as a volume of lyrics, in the press, that the young Norse philosopher, Henrik Steffens, came back to Copenhagen after a long vi∣it to Schelling in Germany full of new romantic ideas. · His lectures at the university, in which Goethe and Schiller were for the first time revealed to the Danish public, created a great sensation. Steffens and Oehlenschläger met one day at Dreier’s Club, and after a conversation of sixteen hours, which has become famous in the history of anecdote, the latter went home, suppressed his two coming volumes, and wrote at a sitting his splendid poem Guldhomene, in a manner totally new to Danish literature. The result of his new enthusiasm speedily showed itself in a somewhat hasty volume of poems, published in 1803, now chiefly remembered as containing the lovely piece called Sanct-Hansaften-Spil. The next two years saw the production of several exquisite works, in particular Thors Reise til Jotunheim, the charming poem in hexameters called Langelandsreisen, and the bewitching piece of fantasy Aladdin’s Lampe. At the age of twenty-six Oehlenschläger was now universally recognized, even by the opponents of the romantic revival, as the leading poet of Denmark. He found no difficulty in obtaining a grant for foreign travel from the Government, and he left his native country for the first time, joining Steffens at Halle in August 1805. Here he wrote the first of his great historical tragedies, Hakon Jarl, which he sent off to Copenhagen, and then proceeded for the winter months to Berlin, where he associated with Humboldt, Fichte, and the leading men of the day. In the spring of 1806 he went on to Weimar, where he spent several months in daily intercourse with Goethe. The autumn of the same year he spent with Tieck in Dresden, and proceeded in December to Paris. Here he resided eighteen months and wrote his three famous masterpieces, Baldur hin Gode, Palnatoke (1807), and Axel og Valborg (1808). In July 1808 he left Paris and spent the autumn and winter in Switzerland as the guest of Madame de Staël-Holstein at Coppet, in the midst of her famous circle of wits. In the spring of 1809 Oehlenschläger went to Rome to visit Thorwaldsen, and in his house wrote his tragedy of Correggio, in German; he translated this into Danish the following year. After an absence of nearly five years he hurriedly returned to Denmark in the spring of 1810, partly to take the chair of aesthetics at the university of Copenhagen, partly to marry the sister-in -law of Rahbek, to whom he had been long betrothed. His first course of lectures dealt with his Danish predecessor Evald, the second with Schiller. From this time forward his literary activity became very great; in 1811 he published the Oriental tale of AU og Gulhyndi, and in 1812 the last of his great tragedies, Staerkodder. From 1814 to 1819 he, or rather his admirers, were engaged in a long and angry controversy with Baggesen, who represented the old didactic school. This contest seems to have disturbed the peace of Oehlenschläger’s mind, and to have undermined his genius. His talent may be said to have culminated in the glorious cycle of verse-romances called Helge, published in 1814. The tragedy of Hagbarth og Signe, 1815, showed a distinct falling-off in style. In 1817 he went back to Paris, and published Hroars Saga and the tragedy of Fostbrödrene. In 1818 he was again in Copenhagen, and wrote the idyll of Den lille Hyrdedreng and the Eddaic cycle called Nordens Guder. His next productions were the tragedies of Erik og Abel (1820) and Vaeringeme i Miklagaard (1826), and the epic of Hrolf Krake (1829). It was in the last-mentioned year that, being in Sweden, Oehlenschläger was publicly crowned with laurel in front of the high altar in Lund cathedral by Bishop Esaias Tegnér, as the “Scandinavian King of Song.” His last volumes were Tordenskjold (1833), Dronning Margrethe (1833), Sokrates (1835), Olaf den Heilige (1836), Knud den Store (1838), Dina (1842), Erik Clipping (1843), and Kiartan og Gudrun (1847), none of which, with the exception, perhaps, of Dina, can in any way be said to be worthy of his early reputation. On his seventieth birthday, 14th November 1849, a public festival was arranged in his honour, and he was decorated by the king of Denmark under circumstances of great pomp. Just two months later, on the 20th of January 1850, he sank, conscious to the last, and was buried in the cemetery of Frederiksberg.
With the exception of Holberg, there has been no Danish writer who has exercised so wide an influence as Oehlenschläger. His great work was to awaken in the breasts of his countrymen an enthusiasm for the poetry and religion of their ancestors, and this he performed to so complete an extent that his name remains to this day synonymous with Scandinavian romance. He supplied his countrymen with romantic tragedies at the very moment when all eyes were turned to the stage, and when the old-fashioned pieces were felt to be inadequate. His plays, partly, no doubt, in consequence of his own early familiarity with acting, fulfilled the stage-requirements of the day, and were popular beyond all expectation. Several of them still keep the stage in spite of their rhetoric. The earliest are the best,—Oehlenschläger’s dramatic masterpiece being, without doubt, his first tragedy, Hakon Jarl. In his poems and plays alike his style is limpid, elevated, profuse; his flight is sustained at a high pitch without visible excitement.
His fluent tenderness and romantic zest have been the secrets of his extreme popularity. Although his inspiration came from Germany, he is not much like a German poet, except when he is consciously following Goethe; his analogy is much rather to be found among the English poets, his contemporaries. His mission towards antiquity reminds us of Scott, but he is, as a poet, a better artist than Scott; he has sometimes touches of exquisite diction and of overwrought sensibility which recall Coleridge to us. In his wide ambition and profuseness he possessed some characteristics of Southey, although his style has far more vitality. With all his faults he was a very great writer, one of the principal pioneers of the romantic movement in Europe, and he will probably not cease to retain the position which he won so easily at the summit of the Scandinavian Parnassus. (e. yy qj
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 17, p. 730
[1,537 words — estimated reading time: 9 minutes]
[1,537 words — estimated reading time: 9 minutes]
Oels
Encyclopedia Britannica
OELS, the chief town of a circle in Prussian Silesia, and the capital of a mediatized principality of its own name, lies in a sandy plain on the Oelsa, 18 miles to the northeast of Breslau. The prince’s chateau, dating from 1558, contains a good library and a collection of pictures. The Schlosskirche was originally built about 980. The other buildings are unimportant. The inhabitants, numbering 10,157 in 1880, are chiefly engaged in making shoes and growing vegetables for sale at Breslau. There is also a manufactory of agricultural implements, and a trade is carried on in grain and flax.
The town of Oels was founded about 940, and appears as the capital of an independent principality at the beginning of the 14th century. The principality, with an area of 750 square miles and about 150,000 inhabitants, passed through various hands and was finally inherited by the ducal family of Brunswick in 1792. The present proprietor is the reigning duke of Brunswick.
See W. Häusler, Geschichte des Fürstenthums Oels (Breslau, 1883)....
OeNANTHIC ACID and ETHER. Liebig and Pelouze, by distilling large quantities of wine, obtained from the very last fractions of the distillate an oil which in a very high degree exhibited the generic smell common to all wines,—the smell which a small remnant of any kind of wine left in an open bottle exhibits after the “bouquet” is gone. They recognized the oil as the ethyl-ether of a particular acid of the composition (C 14 H 2β O 3 )H 2 , which they called “oenanthic acid.” An oil similar to Liebig and Pelouze’s oenanthic ether was isolated by Wöhler from quince-peel. Liebig and Pelouze’s results were called in question by Delffs, who by experiments of his own arrived at the result that their oenanthic acid is identical with pelargonic, C 9 H 17 O 2 . H, which latter is known as a component of the volatile oil of Pelargonium roseum. A. Fischer examined an “oenanthic ether” manufactured by Lichtenberger at Hambach in the Rhenish Palatinate, and found it to be a mixture of the ethyl-ethers of caprylic and capric acids, C 8 H la O 2 and C 10 H 20 O 2 , and fatty acids higher than capric. The general impression amongst chemical wine-specialists seems to be that Liebig and Pelouze’s oenanthic acid was a mixture of capric, caprylic, and other fatty acids. The notion of oenanthic acid must not be mixed up with that of oenanthylic acid, C 7 H 13 O 2 . H, the acid of primary heptyl-alcohol, C 7 H 16 O. The aldehyde C 7 H 14 O, intermediate between the two, is procured by the destructive distillation of castor oil, and from it the acid is easily prepared by oxidation with dilute chromic acid.
OeN0MAUS was king of Olympia, where his wooden house was still shown in the Altis, the sacred precinct, when Pausanias visited it. It was fated that he should be slain by the husband of his daughter Hippodamia. His father, the god Ares-Hippios, gave him winged horses swift as the wind, and he promised his daughter to the man who could outstrip him in the chariot race; those suitors who were beaten died by his hand. Pelops, by the treachery of Myrtilus, the charioteer of Oenomaus, won the race and married Hippodamia. Pelops is conceived as a stranger from Asia Minor, and Oenomaus is obviously the representative of a race of Ares-v τ orshippers who were conquered by, or amalgamated with, an immigrant race, who brought with them the new religion of Zeus, but who kept up the old worship of Ares in the country where they settled.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 17, p. 731
[624 words — estimated reading time: 4 minutes]
[624 words — estimated reading time: 4 minutes]
A salt of the supposed /nanthic acid.
An oily substance obtained by the distillation of castor oil, recognized as the aldehyde of oenanthylic acid, and hence called also oenanthaldehyde.
A hydrocarbon radical formerly supposed to exist in oenanthic acid, now known to be identical with heptyl.
No thesaurus entries found for "oe".
Type at least 3 letters to search the Bible, or a reference such as John 3:16.