Random Image

You are here: Random Image > Words beginning with l > Random Image for labels

Possible definitions for labels

Babel
Russian short-story writer. Born Jewish in Ukraine, Babel grew up in an atmosphere of persecution that is reflected in his stories. M. Gorky encouraged him to travel abroad to expand his horizons. Out of his experience as a soldier in the war with Poland came the stories in Red Cavalry (1926). His Odessa Tales (1931) include realistic and humorous sketches of the Jewish ghetto outside Odessa. Initially well regarded in the Soviet Union, in the late 1930s Babel's writing was found incompatible with official literary doctrine. He was arrested in 1939 and died in a Siberian prison camp. He is often thought of as Russia's greatest writer of short stories after A. Chekhov.

In the Old Testament, a high tower built in Shinar (Babylonia). According to Genesis 11:1-9, the Babylonians wanted to build a tower "with its top in the heavens." Angry at their presumption, God disrupted the enterprise by confusing the languages of the workers so that they could no longer understand each other. The tower was left unfinished and the people dispersed over the face of the earth. The myth may have been inspired by a tower temple located north of the Marduk temple and known as Bab-ilu ("Gate of God").


Cabell
U.S. writer. Born in Richmond, Va. to a distinguished family, he attacked Amer. orthodoxies and institutions in his best-known novel, Jurgen (1919), a story replete with sexual symbolism. His other works, many of them allegories set in an imaginary medieval province, include The Cream of the Jest (1917), Beyond Life (1919), and The High Place (1923). Though much praised in the 1920s, his mannered style and skeptical view of human experience soon lost favor.


Lares
In Roman religion, guardian deities. Originally gods of cultivated fields, Lares were later worshiped in association with the Penates, the gods of the household. The household Lar, considered the center of the family cult, was often represented as a youthful figure holding a drinking horn and cup. Two Lares might be portrayed standing on either side of Vesta or some other deity. A prayer was said to the Lar or Lares every morning, and offerings were made at family festivals. Public Lares presided over local districts marked by a crossroad; state Lares (praestites), guardians of Rome, were worshiped in a temple on the Via Sacra.


Rabelais
French writer and priest. After apparently studying law, he took holy orders as a Franciscan, but later, because of a dispute, removed to a Benedictine house. In 1530 he left the Benedictines to study medicine, a profession he would follow the rest of his life. He became a significant humanist scholar, publishing translations of Hippocrates and Galen. His fame rests on the five comic novels (one of doubtful authenticity) known collectively as Gargantua and Pantagruel, incl. the masterpieces Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534) as well as Le tiers livre (1546; "The Third Book"), his most ...

Top words beginning with L: loukoum, locomotor, luxate, lackadaisically, leucopoieses, loquacious, laxativeness, lamellirostral, libidinously, leucophane, loblollies, lollingly, lygeum, liminess, lictorian, landshard, levorotation, livable, leatheroid, lanciers

More words beginning with L.

Browse the alphabet: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z