Platystrophia, genus of extinct brachiopods (lamp shells) occurring as fossils in marine rocks of the Middle Ordovician epoch to about the middle of the Silurian period (i.e., from about 472 million to 423 million years ago). Each valve of the shell is convex in profile, and the hinge line between

glowworm: …Arachnocampa of New Zealand and Platyura of the central Appalachians).

canals and inland waterways: Germany: …with the opening of the Plauer Canal in 1746, which ran from the Elbe to the Havel. The 40-km (25-mile) Finow Canal along the Havel to the Liepe, a tributary of the Oder, had been built earlier but fell into decay because of flooding and neglect and was not rebuilt…

Belize: Languages of Belize: The Mennonites in Belize speak Plautdietsch, an archaic Low Saxon (Germanic) language influenced by the Dutch.

Caracalla: …14 he was married to Fulvia Plautilla, the daughter of the influential and ambitious commander of the imperial guard, Fulvius Plautianus; he is said to have hated Plautianus and played an important role in having him executed on the charge of a conspiracy against the imperial dynasty. He also exiled…

United Kingdom: The conquest: Under Aulus Plautius an army of four legions was assembled, together with a number of auxiliary regiments consisting of cavalry and infantry raised among warlike tribes subject to the empire. After delay caused by the troops’ unwillingness to cross the ocean, which they then regarded as…

Plautus was a great Roman comic dramatist, whose works, loosely adapted from Greek plays, established a truly Roman drama in the Latin language. Little is known for certain about the life and personality of Plautus, who ranks with Terence as one of the two great Roman comic dramatists. His work,

dovekie, small, black and white seabird of the North Atlantic. The dovekie belongs to the family Alcidae (order Charadriiformes). It is about 20 centimetres (8 inches) long, with a short bill. Its legs and wings are short, and its feet are webbed. It is a proficient diver, feeding on fish,

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company: …version of its blood-thinning drug Plavix. Three years later Bristol-Myers paid a $2.1 million penalty fine to settle the charges.

Ukraine: Plant and animal life: …on the Black Sea, the Danube Water Meadows Reserve protects the Danube River’s tidewater biota. Other reserves in Ukraine preserve segments of the forest-steppe woodland, the marshes and forests of the Polissya, and the mountains and rocky coast of Crimea.

Biljana Plavšić , known as “the Iron Lady,” was a Bosnian Serb politician who served as president of the Bosnian Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) from 1996 to 1998. Her conduct during and after the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s led to her trial and imprisonment for war crimes. Plavšić was born to

Sean Parker: …Masonis, and Cameron Ring founded Plaxo, a website hosting software that served as an online address book. Parker was fired from Plaxo in 2004 for his erratic engagement with the company.

Samuel Beckett: Continuity of his philosophical explorations: …subject also of the play Play (first performed 1963), which shows the dying moments of consciousness of three characters, who have been linked in a trivial amorous triangle in life, lingering on into eternity.

play, in zoology, behaviour performed in the absence of normal stimuli or behaviour elicited by normal stimuli but not followed to the completion of the ritualized behaviour pattern. Play has been documented only among mammals and birds. Play is common among immature animals, apparently part of the

dramatic literature, the texts of plays that can be read, as distinct from being seen and heard in performance. The term dramatic literature implies a contradiction in that literature originally meant something written and drama meant something performed. Most of the problems, and much of the

Edward Albee: …poetic exploration of evolution; and The Play About the Baby (1998), on the mysteries of birth and parenthood.

List of Children’s Games and Toys in Antiquity: Playacting: …a lot of free time, playacting. It was not uncommon for children to engage in mock sword fights, using weapons made of wood, or to pretend to be their favorite gladiators—professional athletes of their era. Important moments in Roman history were also ripe for playful reenactment by children. Although such…

domino, simple gambling card game playable by two to eight players. The full deck of 52 cards is dealt out singly, so some hands may contain one more card than others. All players ante an agreed amount to a betting pool. In some circles anyone dealt one card fewer than others must ante an extra

André De Toth: …taut World War II adventure Play Dirty (1969), in which Michael Caine, Nigel Green, Nigel Davenport, and several other British actors battled the Germans in North Africa. De Toth also directed, uncredited, several scenes in the 3-D send-up Terror Night (1987), which starred several veterans of the B-horror movie genre.

Herbert Ross: First films: …than its follow-up, the comedy Play It Again, Sam (1972), which became a cult favourite. Woody Allen starred in this adaptation of his own play as an awkward film critic who is coached in his love life by the ghost of Humphrey Bogart. The intricate murder mystery The Last of…

Joan Didion: …Panic in Needle Park (1971), Play It as It Lays (1972; an adaptation of her novel), A Star Is Born (1976; with others), True Confessions (1981), and Up Close and Personal (1996).

Joan Didion: …Didion included the short novels Play It as It Lays (1970), A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984), and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996; film 2020) and the essays Salvador (1983), Miami (1987), and Where I Was From (2003). Essays

Antonio Banderas: Hollywood success: Philadelphia and Interview with the Vampire: …The 13th Warrior (1999), and Play It to the Bone (1999). He made his directorial debut with the comedy Crazy in Alabama (1999), which starred his second wife, actress Melanie Griffith (the two divorced in 2015). In 2001 Banderas reteamed with Rodriguez on Spy Kids, playing a family man who…

Pleiku, city, central Vietnam, located in the central highlands. The city has a hospital, a commercial airfield, and several air bases that are a legacy of its strategic importance during the later stages of the Vietnam War (1965–75). It lies in a mountainous region inhabited mainly by Bahnar and

Jessica Walter: Play Misty for Me and Amy Prentiss: …of a disc jockey in Play Misty for Me, which was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood. Walter drew acclaim for her portrayal of a woman who transforms into a homicidal stalker.

Adam De La Halle: Jeu de Robin et de Marion is a dramatization of the pastoral theme of a knight’s wooing of a pretty shepherdess, with dances and peasants’ dialogue. Jeu du pélérin (“Play of the Pilgrim”) mocks his friends for forgetting him.

Carrie Underwood: Carnival Ride, Cry Pretty, and Denim & Rhinestones: With the album Play On (2009), Underwood continued to demonstrate her wide appeal. In 2010 she won the Grammy Award for best country collaboration for “I Told You So,” a cover version of a Randy Travis song that had originally appeared on Carnival Ride and that she rerecorded…

Play School Movement, educational movement founded in the early 20th century by progressive American educator Caroline Pratt and based on the belief that children create and test their knowledge of the world through play. Approaching education as a multisensory endeavour, Pratt opened the Play

child psychiatry: …to more-specialized methods such as play therapy. In the latter, play activities are used as the primary basis for communication between the child and the psychotherapist. Play activities enable children to express their feelings, thoughts, wishes, and fears more freely and easily than they can through purely verbal communication.

Frédéric Le Play was a French mining engineer and sociologist who developed techniques for systematic research on the family. Le Play was engineer in chief and a professor of metallurgy at the École des Mines from 1840 and the inspector of the school from 1848. He devoted his spare time to

playa, flat-bottom depression found in interior desert basins and adjacent to coasts within arid and semiarid regions, periodically covered by water that slowly filtrates into the ground water system or evaporates into the atmosphere, causing the deposition of salt, sand, and mud along the bottom

List of Children’s Games and Toys in Antiquity: Playacting: …a lot of free time, playacting. It was not uncommon for children to engage in mock sword fights, using weapons made of wood, or to pretend to be their favorite gladiators—professional athletes of their era. Important moments in Roman history were also ripe for playful reenactment by children. Although such…

Cape Canaveral: Playalinda Beach and other southern areas can be reached by road from Titusville but are occasionally closed for space launch activity. The park has many shell middens and mounds left by the Timucua people who once inhabited the region, including Turtle Mound (35 feet [11…

Playboy, American magazine aimed at men, the first to present female nudity and sexually oriented material in a relatively sophisticated format. For the magazine’s first issue in 1953, its founder, Hugh Hefner, used a previously unpublished nude calendar photograph of Marilyn Monroe, who also

The Playboy of the Western World, comedy in three acts by J.M. Synge, published and produced in 1907. It is a masterpiece of the Irish literary renaissance. This most famous of Synge’s works fused the patois of ordinary Irish villagers with Synge’s sophisticated rhetoric. It enraged Irish playgoers

player piano, a piano that mechanically plays music recorded by means, usually, of perforations on a paper roll or digital memory on a computer disc. In its original form as the Pianola, patented in 1897 by an American engineer, E.S. Votey, the player piano was a cabinet called a “piano player”

Player Piano, first novel by Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1952 and reissued in 1954 as Utopia 14. This anti-utopian novel employs the standard science-fiction formula of a futuristic world run by machines and of one man’s futile rebellion against that

Gary Player is a South African who was one of the world’s best professional golfers in the post-World War II era. He was the third man (after Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan, both of the United States) to win the four major tournaments composing the modern golf Grand Slam. In 1955 Player entered

Gary Player is a South African who was one of the world’s best professional golfers in the post-World War II era. He was the third man (after Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan, both of the United States) to win the four major tournaments composing the modern golf Grand Slam. In 1955 Player entered

Wesley Snipes: …in the television thriller series The Player. Snipes appeared as a gang leader in Lee’s controversial Chi-Raq (2015), about gang violence in Chicago. His subsequent credits included Armed Response (2017) and Dolemite Is My Name (2019), a biopic starring Eddie Murphy as a blaxploitation star. He reteamed with Murphy in…

Robert Altman: 1980s and ’90s of Robert Altman: …big screen in 1992 with The Player, a corrosive portrait of the film industry that hinged on a particularly potent performance by Tim Robbins, as a rising studio executive who kills to advance his career, and that included an abundance of cameos by well-known actors. Altman was nominated for an…

Edwin Booth: …Booth founded a club, the Players, in New York City that was intended as a gathering place for actors and eminent men in other professions. He lived at the club in his last years. His farewell stage appearance was as Hamlet in 1891 at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn.…

baseball: Labor issues: …in 1890 formed the short-lived Players League.

Playfair cipher, type of substitution cipher used for data encryption. In cryptosystems for manually encrypting units of plaintext made up of more than a single letter, only digraphs (pairs of letters) were ever used. By treating digraphs in the plaintext as units rather than as single letters, the

Playfair cipher: …the British Foreign Office by Lyon Playfair, the first Baron Playfair of St. Andrews. Below is an example of a Playfair cipher, solved by Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Have His Carcase (1932). Here, the mnemonic aid used to carry out the encryption is a 5 × 5-square…

John Playfair was a Scottish geologist and mathematician known for his explanation and expansion of ideas on uniformitarianism—the theory that the Earth’s features generally represent a response to former processes similar in kind to processes that are operative today. A professor of natural

Edinburgh: The New Town: …crowned by the 19th-century architect William Playfair’s City Observatory (1818) and a charming Gothic house by Craig, built for the astronomer royal. Behind this rise 12 columns of an intended replica of the Parthenon that was designed by Playfair in 1822 as a memorial to the Scots who died in…

John Playford was an English music publisher and bookseller whose popular and frequently expanded collection of music and dance steps remains the principal source of knowledge of English country dance steps and melodies. His book, The English Dancing-Master (1650, but dated 1651; critical ed., M.

South Australia: Shifting the economic base: Premier Thomas Playford was a vigorous salesman for the business prospects of South Australia, emphasizing its lower wage costs, cheaper housing and land prices, lower taxes, and better industrial relations. He promoted the state operation of basic utilities, including electricity (in 1946 his government took over…

playground, controlled setting for children’s play. This institutionalized environment consists of a planned, enclosed space with play equipment that encourages children’s motor development. For most of history children merely shared public spaces such as marketplaces with adults; there was no

softball, a variant of baseball and a popular participant sport, particularly in the United States. It is generally agreed that softball developed from a game called indoor baseball, first played in Chicago in 1887. It became known in the United States by various names, such as kitten ball, mush

theatrical production: The playhouse area: Performer and audience exist together in a common area, within which there is a clearly delineated performing space (ring, stage platform, pit) and an audience space, the two structurally related. Some of the more common patterns of relationship are (1) an amphitheatre, with…

John Frankenheimer: Early work: …dramas for such series as Playhouse 90 (42 shows, including The Days of Wine and Roses and The Turn of the Screw) and Studio One. Frankenheimer also worked on Climax!, and one of the dramas he directed for the program (Deal a Blow [1955]) was adapted into his first feature…

playing cards, set of cards that are numbered or illustrated (or both) and are used for playing games, for education, for divination, and for conjuring. Traditionally, Western playing cards are made of rectangular layers of paper or thin cardboard pasted together to form a flat, semirigid material.

Master of the Playing Cards was an anonymous German artist who is one of the most important of the early engravers in the Rhineland. He is known for a set of playing cards (60 remain) that are distinguished for the manner in which the technique of soft-ground engraving has been handled, as well as

fire ant: Natural history: … are not yet fully developed, play dead.

Gerard Butler: …athlete in the romantic comedy Playing for Keeps. In the action thriller Olympus Has Fallen (2013), Butler played a former U.S. Secret Service agent who acts to foil a terrorist attack on the White House. He reprised the role in London Has Fallen (2016) and Angel Has Fallen (2019).

John Grisham: Other novels: with the Kranks), Bleachers (2003), Playing for Pizza (2007), Calico Joe (2012), and Sooley (2021). The crime thrillers Camino Island (2017) and Camino Winds (2020) center on a female writer in Florida. In 2024 Grisham published Camino Ghosts, the third book in his Camino Series.

Elizabeth George: …the Sake of Elena (1993), Playing for the Ashes (1995), With No One as Witness (2005), Careless in Red (2008), Just One Evil Act (2013), The Punishment She Deserves (2018), and Something to Hide (2022). Between 2001 and 2008 the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and

Daniel Mann: …followed for the TV movie Playing for Time (1980; codirected with Joseph Sargent), a drama based on the life of Fania Fénelon, a musician at Auschwitz who survived the horrors of the camp by performing in a female orchestra. Vanessa Redgrave won an Emmy Award for her nuanced performance as…

Timothy Hutton: …Girls (1996); and the thriller Playing God (1997), in which he took the part of the villain. Hutton also appeared in John Sayles’s Sunshine State (2002). His later films included All the Money in the World (2017), Beautiful Boy (2018), and The Glorias (2020).

A24: Television: …2014 with the debut of Playing House, a sitcom that ran through 2017 on the USA Network. Since then, A24 has produced or developed more than 40 programs across a wide variety of genres.

African American literature: African American roots: …Harlem during the 1920s, and Playing in the Dark, a trenchant examination of whiteness as a thematic obsession in American literature. In 1993 Morrison became the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her later works include Paradise (1998), which traces the fate of an all-Black…

Richard Perry: Career: …“You’re So Vain”—Hotcakes (1974), and Playing Possum (1975). Among the many other albums he produced during the decade were Art Garfunkel’s Breakaway (1975) and Diana Ross’s Baby It’s Me (1977).

fire ant: Natural history: … are not yet fully developed, play dead.

Bernard Kops: …occurs as a dream, and Playing Sinatra (1991), which centres on a brother and sister obsessed with the legendary performer. Kops’s early life of poverty and his Jewish background informs much of his work, including Enter Solly Gold (1961), in which a con artist convinces a Jewish millionaire that he…

the Smiths: His solo career continued with Playland (2014) and Call the Comet (2018).

Rita Dove: …Collected Poems: 1974–2004 (2016), and Playlist for the Apocalypse (2021). In 1993 Dove was appointed poet laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress, becoming the youngest person and the first African American to hold the post.

George Bernard Shaw: First plays: …were revised and published in Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). The first of the second group, Arms and the Man (performed 1894), has a Balkan setting and makes lighthearted, though sometimes mordant, fun of romantic falsifications of both love and warfare. The second, Candida (performed 1897), was important for English…

PlayStation, video game console released in 1994 by Sony Computer Entertainment. The PlayStation, one of a new generation of 32-bit consoles, signaled Sony’s rise to power in the video game world. Also known as the PS One, the PlayStation used compact discs (CDs), heralding the video game

electronic fighting game: Home console games: …as the Sega Dreamcast (1998), PlayStation 2 (2000), and the Microsoft Corporation’s Xbox (2001). In particular, the Dreamcast included a modem for connecting players over the Internet, Microsoft launched Xbox Live (2001), an Internet-based subscription gaming service, and Sony responded in 2002 with a modem for the PlayStation 2.

electronic fighting game: Home console games: …the Xbox 360 (2005) and PlayStation 3 (2006), featured still greater integration of proprietary gaming networks and consoles. Although many of the most popular fighting games, such as Tekken and Mortal Kombat, are available in versions for both platforms, players cannot compete across these networks.

PlayStation: In 2013 Sony released the PlayStation 4 (PS4), a next-generation console designed to compete with the Xbox One. Critics and players embraced the new platform, which boasted outstanding graphics and a smooth online multiplayer experience. The PS4 also doubled as a Blu-ray player and a media streaming device, and Sony’s…

PlayStation Home, network-based service allowing users of the Sony Corporation’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) electronic-game console to interact in a computer-generated virtual community. PlayStation Home uses a video game-like interface to present a socially interactive environment. Players connect via

PlayStation: …with the release of the PlayStation VR (PS VR) in October 2016. The PS VR system included a PS4 as well as a VR headset and controllers. The PS VR was priced well below similar PC-based VR systems, leading many to assume that it would make significant inroads into the…

theatrical production: Preparation of content: …of the final presentation (a playtext).

dramatic literature, the texts of plays that can be read, as distinct from being seen and heard in performance. The term dramatic literature implies a contradiction in that literature originally meant something written and drama meant something performed. Most of the problems, and much of the

Robert E. Sherwood: Behrman, the Playwrights’ Company, which became a major producing company.

Eugene O’Neill: Entry into theatre: …which that fall formed the Playwrights’ Theater in Greenwich Village. Their first bill, on November 3, 1916, included Bound East for Cardiff—O’Neill’s New York debut. Although he was only one of several writers whose plays were produced by the Playwrights’ Theater, his contribution within the next few years made the…

Western architecture: 17th century: The regularized residential city square received its greatest development in France with the planning of the royal squares. The Parisian Place des Vosges (1605), with its well-proportioned facades, shadowed arcades, and balanced colour scheme, was the beginning of a series that culminated with the circular Place des Victoires (1685)…

international payment and exchange: Exchange-rate fluctuations: …United States) met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in 1985. In the “Plaza Agreement,” they declared their intention to bring the dollar down to a more competitive level, if necessary by official sales of dollars on exchange markets.

international payment and exchange: Exchange-rate fluctuations: …United States) met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in 1985. In the “Plaza Agreement,” they declared their intention to bring the dollar down to a more competitive level, if necessary by official sales of dollars on exchange markets.

Arthur Hiller: Films of the 1970s: Hiller and Simon reteamed for Plaza Suite (1971), a comedy consisting of three vignettes, all of which featured Walter Matthau, who earned accolades for his multiple performances; also receiving praise were Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Harris, and Lee Grant in supporting roles. The Hospital (1971) was more ambitious, a bleak satire…

Mike Nichols: Early films: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, and Carnal Knowledge: …Tony Award for directing Simon’s Plaza Suite. His next film project was an adaptation of Joseph Heller’s antiwar cult classic, Catch-22. Perhaps expectations for Nichols’s screen version were unrealistically high, but it did not fare well when it was released in 1970, failing to please either fans of the novel…

Aubrey Plaza is an American actress, comedian, producer, and writer known for her intensity and distinctive deadpan comedic style. In her youth, Plaza took part in community theater in her native Wilmington, acting, performing improv, and directing one-act plays. After high school, she moved to New

Aubrey Plaza is an American actress, comedian, producer, and writer known for her intensity and distinctive deadpan comedic style. In her youth, Plaza took part in community theater in her native Wilmington, acting, performing improv, and directing one-act plays. After high school, she moved to New

Argentina: The rise of radicalism: The interim presidency of Victorino de la Plaza (1914–16) was followed by that of the Radical leader Irigoyen (1916–22). He was the first Argentine president who owed his victory to the popular vote rather than to selection by the incumbent president from the members of a ruling oligarchy.

Palestinian Authority: Administration: …to the confidence of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). The PLC consists of 132 members elected to four-year terms. According to the 2005 amendment to the Basic Law, the 2006 election was a mixed majority and proportional representation system. This resulted in the controversial outcome of Hamas winning 74 seats…

Nicaragua: Political process: Leading political parties include the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Constitucionalista; PLC), the Conservative Party of Nicaragua (Partido Conservador de Nicaragua; PCN), and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional; FSLN). The FSLN was established in the early 1960s as a guerrilla group dedicated to the overthrow…

Leonel Fernández Reyna: The presidential candidate of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), he lost the first round of the elections to the mayor of Santo Domingo, José Francisco Peña Gómez, of the Dominican Revolutionary Party. After forming an alliance with the ruling Social Christian Reformist Party, however, Fernández won the second round, held…

Moldova: Independent Moldova: …and Vlad Filat of the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) was named prime minister. Despite their victory, however, the four parties fell short of the three-fifths majority required to choose a president.

plea bargaining, in law, the practice of negotiating an agreement between the prosecution and the defense whereby the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser offense or (in the case of multiple offenses) to one or more of the offenses charged in exchange for more lenient sentencing, recommendations, a

On October 16, 1859, staunch abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), in an attempt to incite a major insurrection of enslaved people. The raid, conducted by Brown and 21 recruits (his 2 sons, 14 white men, and 5 Black men), was to

Western philosophy: Ordinary-language philosophy: In a celebrated paper, “A Plea for Excuses” (1956), he explained that the appeal to ordinary language in philosophy should be regarded as the first word but not the last word. That is, one should be sensitive to the nuances of everyday speech in approaching conceptual problems, but in…

Georges Bernanos: …his Lettre aux Anglais (1942; Plea for Liberty, 1944) influenced his compatriots during World War II. A return to France in 1945 brought disillusionment with his country’s lack of spiritual renewal, and he lived thereafter in Tunis until he returned to France suffering from his final illness. Shortly before his…

pleached alley, garden path, on each side of which living branches have been intertwined in such a way that a wall of self-supporting living foliage has grown up. To treat each side of a garden walk, or alley, with pleaching and thus make a secluded walk was a favourite device of the 16th and 17th

pleading, in law, written presentation by a litigant in a lawsuit setting forth the facts upon which he claims legal relief or challenges the claims of his opponent. A pleading includes claims and counterclaims but not the evidence by which the litigant intends to prove his case. After both the

Scott Turow: … (1990; television film 1992) and Pleading Guilty (1993; television film 2010) continue in the vein of legal drama, although the former focuses more on the domestic troubles of its protagonist. The latter tells the story of a lawyer and former cop who is instructed to find a coworker who has…

Pleasant Colony, (foaled 1978), American racehorse (Thoroughbred) who in 1981 won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes but lost at the Belmont Stakes, ending his bid for the coveted Triple Crown of American horse racing. Pleasant Colony was foaled on the Virginia farm of his owner, Thomas M.

Ramón María del Valle-Inclán: …four novelettes known as the Sonatas (1902–05), feature a beautifully evocative prose and a tone of refined and elegant decadence. They narrate the seductions and other doings of a Galician womanizer who is partly an autobiographical figure. In his subsequent works Valle-Inclán developed a style that is rich in both…