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Possible definitions for saumur
Samar
Island (pop., 1990: 1,247,000), E central part of the Philippines. The third-largest after Luzon and Mindanao, it is one of the Visayan islands and has an area of 5,050 sq mi (13,080 sq km). Occupied by the Japanese in 1942, it was retaken by the U.S. in 1944. The rugged interior is sparsely settled; permanent settlements are generally coastal. Coconuts and abaca are the main cash crops. The island is well forested, and there are logging and sawmill operations on the E coast.
samurai
Member of the Japanese warrior class. In early Japanese history, culture was associated with the imperial court and warriors were looked down on. The samurai became important with the rise in private estates (shoen), which needed samurai protection. Their power increased, and when Minamoto Yoritomo established the Kamakura shogunate (1192-1333), they became the ruling class. They were characterized by an ethic of discipline, stoicism, and service (see bushido). Samurai culture developed further during the Ashikaga shogunate (1338-1573). During two centuries of peace under the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867), they were largely transformed into civil bureaucrats. As government employees, they received a fixed stipend that was worth less and less in the flourishing merchant economy of the 18th-19th cent. in Edo (Tokyo) and Osaka. By the mid-19th cent., lower-ranking samurai, eager for societal change and anxious to create a strong Japan in the face of Western encroachment, overthrew the shogunal government in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Feudal distinctions were abolished in 1871. Some samurai rebelled (see Saigo Takamori) but most threw themselves into the modernization of Japan. See also daimyo, han.
sauger
Species (Stizostedion canadense) of pikeperch (family Percidae), carnivorous food and game fishes found in lakes and silty rivers of E N. America. Saugers are slender and darkly mottled. They have two dorsal fins and rarely exceed a length of 12 in. (30 cm) or a weight of about 2 lbs (1 kg).
Sumer
S division of ancient Babylonia, S Mesopotamia, Tigris-Euphrates Valley, in what is now S Iraq. It was first settled c.4500-4000 BC by a non-Semitic people called the Ubaidians. They were the first civilizing force in Sumer, draining the marshes for agriculture and developing trade. The Sumerians, who spoke a Semitic language that came to dominate the region, arrived c.3300 BC and developed the world's first known cities, which evolved into city-states. As rivalry among them increased, each adopted the institution of kingship, and eventually they were loosely united under one city or the other, beginning with Kish c.2800 BC. Thereafter, Kish, Erech, Ur, Nippur, and Lagash vied for ascendancy for hundreds of years. The area came under the Elamites (c.2530-2450 BC) and later the Akkadians, led by their king Sargon (r.2334-2279 BC). The city-states were largely independent after the Akkadian ...
Top words beginning with S: sagas, stainableness, sodaless, skeyting, stellifying, sinico, splenectomizing, semisport, spirtle, slavist, steganopod, scrog, sculptural, sufficer, skeily, sinisterwise, synoptic, snobbier, straphang, scapuloaxillary
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