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Western

Definition: Western

Western

Adjective

1. Relating to or characteristic of regions of western parts of the world; "the Western Hemisphere"; "Western Europe"; "the Western Roman Empire".

2. Lying in or toward the west.

3. Of or characteristic of regions of the United States west of the Mississippi River; "a Western ranch".

4. Lying toward or situated in the west; "our company's western office".

5. Of wind; from the west.

6. (of music) characteristic of rural life.

Noun

1. A film about life in the western US during the period of exploration and development.

2. A sandwich made from a western omelet.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

Date "western" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1050. (references)

 

Specialty Definition: American Old West

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Western United States of America has played a significant role in both history and fiction. The term Wild West relates to an ever-shifting nebulous land populated by cowboys and Indianss, trappers and explorers; and located to the west of the settled, law-abiding United States and beyond The Frontier.

See also: The West (U.S.)

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "American Old West."

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Philosophy

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Philosophy is the critical study of the most fundamental questions that humankind has been able to ask. In doing so, Philosophy asks what is the nature of reality, and what is the reality of nature. Do our perceptions of reality match the actual reality that is "out there"? What does it mean to think, to have a mind? How can we know that other minds (i.e. other thinking beings) actually exist? Is there a difference between right and wrong, and if so, how can we prove this? How do we define rules that allow us to apply theoretical ideas of right and wrong in practical situations? What do we mean by the word "God"? Does God exist? Philosophy studies such concepts as existence, goodness, knowledge, and beauty. It asks "Is knowledge possible," and if so, "What is knowledge?" Philosophy is the critical, speculative or analytical study of any of these topics.

Philosophers generally frame problems in a logical manner then work towards a solution based on logical processes and reasoning, based on a critical reading and response to previous work in this area.

It proceeds by formulating problems carefully based on all known facts, and proceeding to logically offer solutions to them, giving arguments for the solutions, and engaging in a dialectical process to discern the truth; this is the method of science without so much dependence on physical experimentation. Just as science proceeds by observation, formulation of a hypothesis, and further experimentation, so philosophy proceeds by logical formulation of a problem, argument for a solution, and counter-argument. These processes proceed until a solution is reached. Philosophy has developed more slowly than other sciences because it is solely dependent on cognitive integrity, without a coherent paradigm determining what kinds of experimental evidence to accept. In fact, some have argued that the existence of such a paradigm is what caused the various natural sciences to diverge from philosophy, which was their original home (as reflected in the term Ph.D, for Doctor of Philosophy).

Western and Eastern Philosophy

Members of many societies around the world have considered the same questions, and built philosophic traditions based upon each other's works. Philosophy may be broadly divided into various realms based loosely on geography. The term "philosophy" alone in a Euro-American academic context usually refers to the philosophic traditions of Western civilization, sometimes also called Western philosophy. In the West, the term "eastern philosophy" broadly subsumes the philosophic traditions of Asia and the East.

Western Philosophy

The Western philosophic tradition began with the Greeks and continues to the present day. Famous Western philosophers include Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Eastern Philosophy

Famous Eastern philosophers include Gautama Buddha, Bodhidharma, Lao Zi, Confucius, and Zhuang Zi. This article deals primarily with the Western philosophic tradition; for more information on Eastern philosophies, see Eastern philosophy.

In general

Popularly, the word "philosophy" is often used to mean any form of wisdom, or any person's perspective on life (as in "philosophy of life") or basic principles behind or method of achieving something (as in "my philosophy about driving on highways"). That is different from the academic meaning, and it is the academic meaning which is used here.

Origins

To start with, "philosophy" meant simply "the love of wisdom." "Philo-" comes from the Greek word philein, meaning to love, and "-sophy" comes from the Greek word sophia, or wisdom. "Philosopher" replaced the word "sophist" (from sophoi), which was used to describe "wise men," teachers of rhetoric, who were important in Athenian democracy. Some of the first sophists were what we would now call philosophers. In Plato's dialogues, Socrates often contrasts Philosophers (those who love wisdom) with Sophists, those Socrates characterised as dishonest for hiding their ignorance behind word play and flattery, and convincing others of what was baseless or untrue. "Sophist" to this day is a derogatory term for one who persuades rather than reasons.

The introduction of the term "philosophy" was ascribed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras (see Diogenes Laertius: "De vita et moribus philosophorum", I, 12; Cicero: "Tusculanae disputationes", V, 8-9). This ascription is certainly based on a passage in a lost work of Herakleides Pontikos, a disciple of Aristotle. It is considered to be part of the widespread Pythagoras legends of this time. In fact the term "philosophy" was not in use long before Plato.

The scope of philosophy was "all intellectual endeavors". It has long since come to mean the study of an especially abstract, nonexperimental intellectual endeavor. In fact, and as was mentioned at the opening of this article, philosophy is a notoriously difficult word to define and the question "What is philosophy?" is a vexed philosophical question. It is often observed that philosophers are unique in the extent to which they disagree about what their field even is.

Philosophical subdisciplines

Philosophy has many subdisciplines.

Axiology, metaphysics and epistemology are what many consider the three main branches from which all philosophical discourse stems. Logic is sometimes included as another main branch, sometimes as a separate science usually worked on by philosophers, sometimes just as a characteristically philosophical method applying to all the others.

How to get started in philosophy

It is a platitude (at least among people who write introductions to philosophy) that everybody has a philosophy, though they might not all realize it or be able to defend it. But at the same time the word "philosophy" as it is used by philosophers is nothing like what is meant by people who say "Here's my philosophy (of life, etc.): . . ." Such is the tension between pedagogy and scholarship.

If you're already interested in studying philosophy, your reason might be to improve the way you live or think somehow, or you simply wish to get acquainted with one of the most ancient areas of human thought. On the other hand, if you don't see what all the fuss is about, it might help to read the motivation to philosophize, which explains what motivates many people to "do philosophy," and get an introduction to philosophical method, which is important to understanding how philosophers think. It might also help to acquaint yourself with some considerations about just what philosophy is.

Those who are new to the subject of philosophy are advised to study logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, and political philosophy as these are - arguably - the central disciplines.

Applied philosophy

Philosophy has applications. The most obvious applications are those in ethics--applied ethics in particular--and in political philosophy. The political philosophies of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls have shaped and been used to justify governments and their actions. Philosophy of education deserves special mention, as well; progressive education as championed by John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational practices in the United States in the twentieth century.

Other important, but less immediate applications can be found in epistemology, which might help one to regulate one's notions of what knowledge, evidence, and justified belief are. Philosophy of science discusses the underpinnings of the scientific method, among other topics sometimes useful to scientists. Aesthetics can help to interpret discussions of art. Even ontology, surely the most abstract and least practical-seeming branch of philosophy, has had important consequences for logic and computer science. In general, the various "philosophies of," such as philosophy of law, can provide workers in their respective fields with a deeper understanding of the theoretical or conceptual underpinnings of their fields.

Moreover, recently, there has been developing a burgeoning profession devoted to applying philosophy to the problems of ordinary life: philosophical counseling.

Philosophy contrasted with other disciplines

Natural Science

Originally the term "philosophy" was applied to all intellectual endeavour. Aristotle studied what would now be called biology, meterology, physics, and cosmology, alongside his metaphysics and ethics. Even in the eighteenth century physics and chemistry were still classified as "natural philosophy", that is, the philosophical study of nature. Today these latter subjects are referred to as science.

Psychology, economics, sociology, and linguistics were once the domain of philosophers insofar as they were studied at all, but now have only a weaker connection with the field. In the late twentieth century cognitive science and artificial intelligence could be seen as being forged in part out of "philosophy of mind."

Philosophy is done a priori. It does not and cannot rely on experiment, However, in some ways philosophy is close to science in its character and method; Analytic philosophy urges that philosophers should emulate the methods of natural science; Quine holds that philosophy just is a branch of natural science, simply the most abstract one. This approach, common nowadays, is called "philosophical naturalism"

Philosophers have always devoted some study to science and the scientific method, and to logic, and this involves, indirectly, studying the subject matters of those sciences. Whether philosophy also has its own, distinct subject matter is a contentious point. Traditionally ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics have all been philosophical subjects, but many philosophers have, especially in the twentieth century, rejected these as futile questions (the Vienna Circle). Philosophy has also concerned itself with explaining the foundations and character knowledge in general (of science, or history), and in this case it would be a sort of "science of science" but some now hold that this cannot consist in any more than clarifying the arguments and claims of other sciences. This suggests that philosophy might be the study of meaning and reasoning generally; but some still would claim either that this is not a science, or that if it is it ought not to be pursued by philosophers.

All these views have something in common: whatever philosophy essentially is or is concerned with, it tends on the whole to proceed more "abstractly" than most (or most other) natural sciences. It does not depend as much on experience and experiment, and does not contribute as directly to technology. It clearly would be a mistake to identify philosophy with any one natural science; whether it can be identified with science very broadly construed is still an open question.

Philosophy of Science

This is an active discipline pursued by both trained philosophers and scientists. Philosophers often refer to, and interpret, experimental work of various kinds (as in philosophy of physics and philosophy of psychology). But this is not surprising: such branches of philosophy aim at philosophical understanding of experimental work. It is not the philosophers in their capacity as philosophers, who perform the experiments and formulate the scientific theories under study. Philosophy of science should not be confused with science it studies any more than biology should be confused with plants and animals.

Theology and Religious studies

Like philosophy, most religious studies, are not experimental. Parts of theology, including questions about the existence and nature of gods, clearly overlap with philosophy of religion. Aristotle considered theology a branch of metaphysics, the central field of philosophy, and most philosophers prior to the twentieth century have devoted significant effort to theological questions. So the two are not unrelated. But other part of religious studies, such as the comparison of different world religions, can be easily distinguished from philosophy in just the way that any other social science can be distinguished from philosophy. These are closer to history and sociology, and involve specific observations of particular phenomena, here particular religious practices.

Nowadays religion plays a very marginal role in philosophy. The Empiricist tradition in modern philosophy often held that religious questions are beyond the scope of human knowledge, and many have claimed that religious language is literally meaningless: there are not even questions to be answered. Some philosophers have felt that these difficulties in evidence were irrelevant, and have argued for, against, or just about religious beliefs on moral or other grounds. Nonetheless, in the main stream of twentieth century philosophy there are very few philosophers who give serious consideration to religious questions.

Mathematics

Math uses very specific, rigorous methods of proof that philosophers sometimes (only rarely) try to emulate. Most philosophy is written in ordinary prose, and while it strives to be precise it does not usually attain anything like mathematical clarity. As a result, mathematicians hardly ever disagree about results, while philosophers of course do disagree about their results, as well as their methods.

The Philosophy of mathematics is a branch of philosophy of science; but in many ways mathematics has a special relationship to philosophy. This is because the study of logic is a central branch of philosophy, and mathematics is a paradigm example of logic. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries logic made great advances, and mathematics has been proven to be reducible to logic (at least, to first-order logic with some set theory). The use of formal, mathematical logic in philosophy now resembles the use of math in science, although it is not as frequent.

Some tentative generalizations about what philosophy is

So philosophy, it seems, is a discipline that draws on knowledge that the average educated person has, and it does not make use of experimentation and careful observation, though it may interpret philosophical aspects of experiment and observation.

More positively, one might say that philosophy is a discipline that examines the meaning and justification of certain of our most basic, fundamental beliefs, according to a loose set of general methods. But what we might mean by the words "basic, fundamental beliefs"?

A belief is fundamental if it concerns those aspects of the universe which are most commonly found, which are found everywhere: the universal aspects of things. Philosophy studies, for example, what existence itself is. It also studies value--the goodness of things--in general. Surely in human life we find the relevance of value or goodness everywhere, not just moral goodness, though that might be very important, but even more generally, goodness in the sense of anything that is actually desirable, the sense, for example, in which an apple, a painting, and a person can all be good. (If indeed there is a single sense in which they are all called "good.")

Of course, physics and the other sciences study some very universal aspects of things; but it does so experimentally. Philosophy studies those aspects that can be studied without experimentation. Those are aspects of things that are very general indeed; to take yet another example, philosophers ask what physical objects as such are, as distinguished from properties of objects and relations between objects, and perhaps also as distinguished from minds or souls. Physicists proceed as though the notion of a physical body is quite clear and straightforward--which perhaps in the end it will found to be--but at any rate, physics assumes that, and then asks questions about how all physical bodies behave, and then does experiments to find out the answers.

Quotes

"Science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know." - Bertrand Russell

"What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing." - Ambrose Bierce

"No one would hire a plumber who claimed there was no such thing as plumbing pipes, but apparently such standards of caution and care are not required of philosophers." - Dr. Hugh Akston in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

Philosophical issues, theories, and movements

agnosticism -- altruism -- anti-realism -- applied ethics -- Aristotelianism -- Buddhist philosophy -- conceptualism -- coherentism -- Confucianism -- Conscience -- consequentialism -- constructivism -- cosmology -- Critical Theory -- deconstruction-- determinism -- egoism -- empiricism -- epicureanism -- ethics -- existentialism -- feminism -- foundationalism -- foundation ontology -- formalism -- French materialism -- German idealism -- hedonism -- historicism -- idealism -- intuitionism -- Irrationalism and Aestheticism -- irrealism -- knowledge -- logical positivism -- materialism -- mechanism -- mentalism -- memetics -- naive realism -- nativism -- nominalism -- ontology -- operationalism -- paternalism -- philosophical naturalism -- philosophical pessimism -- philosophy of action -- physicalism -- Platonism -- pragmatism -- probabilism -- psychological egoism -- Queer studies -- rationalism -- realism -- reality enforcement -- relativism -- reliabilism -- stoicism -- subjectivism -- scholasticism -- solipsism -- supertasks -- Taoism -- teleology -- traditionalism -- Transcendentalism -- utilitarianism -- vitalism

See also:

External links

 simple:Philosophy

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Philosophy."

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The West (U.S.)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)


Orange-red states are in the West region.

The U.S. West region refers to what are now the westernmost states of the United States.

The following states are considered part of the West:

Alaska and Hawaii, being detached from the other western states, have few similarities with them, but are usually also classified as part of the West.

Geography

Natural geography

The West is the most geographically diverse region of the country, with several geographical regions running north to south. Along the Pacific Ocean coast lie the Coast Ranges, which are usually not very tall. They collect a large part of the airborne moisture moving in from the ocean. Even in relatively arid central California, the Coast Ranges squeeze enough water out of the clouds to support the growth of coast redwoods.

East of the Coast Ranges lie several intensively cultivated fertile valleys, notably the San Joaquin Valley of California and the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

Beyond the valleys lie the Sierra Nevada in the south and the Cascade Range in the north. These mountains are some of the highest in the United States. Mount Whitney, at 14,491 feet (4,418 meters) the tallest peak in the contiguous 48 states, is in the Sierra Nevada. The Cascades are also volcanic. Mount Rainier, a volcano in Washington, is also well over 14,000 feet. These mountain ranges are quite wet, capturing most of the moisture that remains after the Coast Ranges, and creating a rain shadow.

East of these great mountain ranges is a vast arid land, encompassing much of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The Mojave Desert and Sonora Desert are two of the many deserts found here.

Beyond the deserts lie the Rocky Mountains. In the north, they run immediately east of the Cascade Range, so that the desert region does not reach all the way to the Canadian border. The Rockies are hundreds of miles wide, and run uninterrupted from New Mexico to Alaska. The tallest peaks of the Rockies, some of which are over 14,000 feet, are found in central Colorado.

East of the Rocky Mountains begin the Great Plains, a vast grassyy plateau sloping gradually down to the forests near the Mississippi River.

Human geography

Most of these states are growing rapidly. The coastal strip includes several major cities, but the areas between the Rocky Mountains in the east and the Sierra Nevada are still thinly populated. In 2000, Wyoming was the least populous state, with population of 493,782 while California was the most populous, with 33,871,648.

Because the tide of development had not yet reached most of the West when conservation became a national issue, agencies of the federal government own and manage vast areas of land. (The most important among these are the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management within the Interior Department, and the U. S. Forest Service within the Agriculture Department.) National parks are reserved for recreational activities such as fishing, camping, hiking, and boating, but other government lands also allow commercial activities like ranching, lumbering and mining. In recent years some local residents who earn their livelihoods on federal land have come into conflict with the land's managers, who are required to keep land use within environmentally acceptable limits.

Culture

Alaska, the northernmost state in the Union, is a vast land of few, but hardy, people, many of them native, and great stretches of wilderness, protected in national parks and wildlife refuges. Hawaii is the only state in the union in which Asian Americans outnumber residents of European stock. Some members of its substantial Native Hawaiian population are resentful of American sovereignty over the island chain. Beginning in the 1980s large numbers of Asians have also settled in California, mainly around Los Angeles.

Los Angeles -- and Southern California as a whole -- bears the stamp of its large Mexican-American population. Now the second largest city in the nation, Los Angeles is best known as the home of the Hollywood film industry. Fueled by the growth of Los Angeles, as well as the San Francisco Bay Area, including "Silicon Valley", California has become the most populous of all the states.

Western cities' reputation for diversity and tolerance has been marred as of recent years by increasing profiling and segregation, police brutality towards minorities, and racially based riots. Nevetheless, perhaps because so many westerners have moved there from other regions to make a new start, as a rule interpersonal relations are marked by an individual and let live attitude. The western economy is varied. California, for example, is both an agricultural state and a high-technology manufacturing state.

Politically, the West is split between the Pacific Coast states and the interior states. The Pacific Coast leans towards the Democratic Party, due to its large number of urban dwellers and Mexican-American farm laborers. The rural interior states are heavily Republican.

Parts of the Mainland West has been exaggerated as the Wild West.

Related topics

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TV Western

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

A western television show is a cowboy story which takes place in the 'old west' and involves cowboys, cattle ranchers, miners, farmers, indians, guns and horses.

  1. Adventures of Brisco County, Jr
  2. Alias Smith and Jones
  3. The Big Valley
  4. Bonanza
  5. Branded
  6. Four Feather Falls (puppet show)
  7. Gunsmoke
  8. Have Gun, Will Travel
  9. The High Chapparal
  10. The Lone Ranger
  11. Maverick
  12. Rawhide
  13. The Rifleman
  14. The Roy Rogers Show
  15. The Virginian
  16. Wagon Train TV Show
  17. The Wild Wild West

Kung Fu might also be included since it takes place in the same era.

Snowy River: The McGregor Saga has similar themes but is set in Australia, so it might be called a "southern".

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "TV Western."

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University of Western Ontario

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The University of Western Ontario is located in London, Ontario. It is commonly referred to as UWO, Western Ontario, or simply Western.

Motto: Veritas et Utilitas
Chancellor Ellen Clitheroe
President Paul Davenport
School type Public
Religious affiliation Main campus: None
Brescia: Catholic
Huron: Anglican
King's: Catholic
Founded 1878
Location London, Ontario, Canada
Enrollment 25 000 undergraduate
5000 graduate
Campus surroundings Urban
Campus size 155 hectares
Sports teams Mustangs
Mascot Mustang

Campus

The university covers 155 hectares of land on the North Branch of the Thames River.

Organization

The university's Chancellor is Ellen Clitheroe, and its President is Dr. Paul Davenport. The university over 60 faculties and programs. Faculties and programs at the university are:

The university also has three affiliated colleges:

Students

There are approximately 25 000 undergraduate and 5000 graduate students at UWO. King's College has about 1500 students, Huron University College about 1000, and Brescia University College about 500. The major student residences are Medway Hall, Sydenham Hall, Alumni House, Essex Hall, Elgin Hall, Delaware Hall, and Saugeen-Maitland Hall. The affiliated colleges have their own residences.

Faculty

There are about 1200 faculty members at the university and affiliated colleges. The Faculty of Social Science employs the highest number of faculty.

Sports, Clubs, and Traditions

In 1929 J.W. Little Stadium was built. This stadium served as the site of convocation until 1960, and continued to be used as a sports stadium until 2001 when it was torn down and replaced with TD-Waterhouse Stadium. The new stadium was the primary site of the 2001 Summer Canada Games, which were held in London.

Western has over 20 sports teams, which are called the Mustangs. From 1939 to 1948 the football team was undefeated, and they have won 6 Vanier Cups. For 30 years the football team was coached by John P. Metras, for whom the Canadian Interuniversity Sport's best defensive linesman award is named. The men's basketball team has also won many championships.

There are over 100 clubs, for academic, religious, cultural, and other pursuits, which are governed by the University Students' Council. The Student Council also publishes The Gazette, the student newspaper, which was founded in 1904 and given its present name in 1937.

UWO has a traditional rivalry with the University of Waterloo, located only one hour to the east. There is also a rivalry with McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Many students at other universities think of UWO as a "party school," or a school for rich students (leading to the nickname "University of Wealthy Ontarians"), so UWO tends to have a rivalry with almost every other school in Ontario. However, this reputation is no longer as strong as it was in the past.

The Engineering students often pull many pranks during the year, usually against the new students each September.

History

The university was founded in 1878 by Bishop Isaac Hellmuth of the Anglican Diocese of Huron as "The Western University of London Ontario." It incorporated Huron College, which had been founded in 1863. The first four faculties were Arts, Divinity, Law and Medicine, and there were originally only 15 students when classes began in 1881. The first of these students graduated in 1883. In 1916 the current site of the university was purchased from the Kingsmill family, and in 1923 the name of the university was changed to its present form. The first two buildings constructed at the new site were the Arts Building (now University College) and the Natural Science Building (now the Physics and Astronomy Building). These were built in a neo-Gothic or "Collegiate Gothic" style. The University College tower, one of the most distinctive features of the university, was named the Middlesex Memorial Tower in honour of the men from Middlesex County who had fought in World War I (all 40 male students at the university in 1914 had enlisted). Classes on the present site began in 1924.

Although enrolment was low for many years, after World War II the university began to increase greatly in size, and by the 1970s 10% of university students in Ontario were enrolled at UWO. After World War II, the university saw the addition of new faculties such as the Faculty of Graduate Studies (1947), the School of Business Administration (now the Richard Ivey School of Business) (1949), the Faculty of Engineering Science (1957), the Faculty of Law (1959), and Althouse College for Education students (1963).

Other notable buildings on campus include Thames Hall (built in 1950), the Stevenson-Lawson Building (built in 1959), Middlesex College (with its clock tower, another distinctive feature of the university, built in 1960), Talbot College {built in 1966), Alumni Hall (built in 1967), the University Campus of the London Health Sciences Centre, the John P. Robarts Research Institute, the Lawson Health Research Institute, the D.B. Weldon Library, the John Labatt Visual Arts Centre, the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory, the University Community Centre, the Social Science Centre, and T.D. Waterhouse Stadium (built in 2001). There is also the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory, built in 1940 as the first observatory at a Canadian university, and named after the grandfather of actor Hume Cronyn. The McIntosh Memorial Art Gallery was built in 1942, and is now the oldest university art gallery in Canada.

The school colours are purple and white, and the school's motto is Veritas et utilitas, meaning Truth and usefulness.

Famous Alumni

There is also a fictional alumnus - Michael Patterson from the comic strip For Better or For Worse.

Famous Faculty

Prominent Groups

External Links

See also: List of Ontario Universities

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "University of Western Ontario."

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West Coast blues

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The West Coast blues is a type of blues music characterized by jazz and jump blues influences, strong piano-dominated sounds and jazzy guitar solos (which originated from Texas blues players relocated to California).

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Western

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The term Western can have multiple meanings depending on its context. Most modern uses of the term refer to Western society, Western countries, or European culture, typically also including those countries whose ethnic identity and their dominant culture derive from European culture. Thus in various contexts the term "Western" may refer to something that came from the east or north.

The term is usually associated with the cultural tradition that traces its origins to Greek thought and Christian religion. Cornerstones in this tradition are arguably:

The original division between East and West can be traced to the Greek world as opposed to the civilisations of the Near and Middle east in the first millennium B.C.

Later, the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the 3rd century CE, divided the Roman Empire into two regions, each administered by a Caesar (Tetrarchy). The Western part became the core of the Western world. The other part is sometimes counted as part of the Western world (because of its Christian faith) and sometimes not (because it diverged from the tradition of Greek philosophy and polity). As a result, Orthodox Europe, e.g. Russia, may or may not be considered part of the West.

Further discussion

In the early 4th century, the Emperor Constantine the Great established the city of Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Empire included lands east of the Adriatic Sea and bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of the Black Sea. These two divisions of the Eastern and Western Empires were reflected in the administration of the Christian Church, with Rome and Constantinople debating and arguing over whether either city was the capital of Christianity (see Great Schism). As the eastern and western churches spread their influence, the line between "East" and "West" can be described as moving, but generally followed a cultural divide that was defined by the existence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating power and influence of the church in Rome. This cultural division was and is long lasting; it still existed during the Cold War as the approximate western boundary of those countries that were allied with the Soviet Union.

In the Near East or Middle East, (both terms relative to Europe as being in the west), the distinction of Eastern and Western Europe is of less importance, so countries that we might speak of as part of Eastern Europe, i.e. Russia are counted as Western when speaking about the general cultural of Europe and Christianity. But the line between East and West doesn't move any further East, even when contrasted with China.

Since the countries in the "West" were generally those that explored and colonized outside of Europe, the term Western became, to some people, associated with European colonialism. However, many others have established colonial rules, so it is not uniquely a Western phenomenon.

So it is with complete sensibility that:

See also: Far West, Western movie

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western."

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Western Armenian

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Western Armenian is one of the two modern dialects of Armenian, an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian Diaspora, mainly in North America and Europe, but also in limited pockets of western Turkey and northern Syria.

Phonology

The phonology of Western Armenian (WA), unlike Eastern Armenian (EA), features a two-way distinction in its stops and affricates (here given with corresponding fricatives):

Stop Affricate Fricative
Labial voiced b v
voiceless pʰ (p) f
nasal m
Dental voiced d dz z
voiceless tʰ (t) cʰ (c) s
nasal n
Palatal voiced ʤ (j) ʒ (zh)
voiceless ʧʰ (ch) ʃ (sh)
Velar voiced g ɣ (gh)
voiceless kʰ (k) x (kh)
Glottal voiceless h

[Editor's note: p, t, k corresponding to EA p', t', k' will be represented that way here for transliteration purposes, meaning that /pʰ/, for example, will look like either p or p'.]

Armenian also features a two-way distinction between its rhotic sounds, /r/ (r') and /ɹ/ (r). Armenian has one lateral approximant, /l/.

There are seven Armenian vowels:

  Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e (e, ê) ə (ë) o (o, ô)
Low   a

[Editor's note: the orthographic rules of WA distinguish e from ê, even though they are both pronounced /e/, and o from ô, even though they are both pronounced /o/. They will be represented thus, i.e. as distinct graphs.]

---

The change in Western Armenian, going from a three-way to a two-way distinction, involves the merging of EA /b/ and /pʰ/ as (WA) /pʰ/, etc.; and, the voicing of Eastern /pʻ/ to (WA) /b/, etc. As a result, a word like jur (EA, 'water') is pronounced (WA) chur, while EA chermak ('white') is WA jermag, and t'or ('grandson') and k'ar ('stone') are pronounced identically in Eastern and Western Armenian.

Another element of both varieties of Armenian is devoicing of final stops and affricates, so that a word like t'az ('crown') is pronounced t'as, and bed (head) as bet.

Morphology

Nouns

Western Armenian nouns have six casess: Nominative (subject), Accusative (direct object), Genitive (possession), Dative (indirect object), Ablative (origin) and Instrumental (means). Of the six cases, the nominative and accusative are the same, and the genitive and dative are the same, meaning that nouns have four distinct forms for case. Nouns in Armenian also decline for number (singular and plural), but do not decline for gender (i.e. masculine or feminine).

Declension in Armenian is based on how the genitive is formed. There are several declensions, but two are the most used (genitive in i, and genitive in u):

  tashd (field) kari (barley)

 

singular plural singular plural
Nom-Acc tashd tashder kari kariner
Gen-Dat tashdi tashderu karu karineru
Abl tashdê tashderê karê karinerê
Instr tashdov tashderov karov karinerov

Articles

Like some other languages such as English, Armenian has definite and indefinite articles. The indefinite article in Western Armenian is më, which follows the noun:

mart më ('a man', Nom.sg), martu më ('of a man', Gen.sg)

The definite article is a suffix attached to the noun, and is one of two forms, either -ë or -n, depending on whether the final sound is a vowel or a consonant, and whether a preceding word begins with a vowel or consonant:

martë ('the man', Nom.sg)
karin ('the barley' Nom.sg)
but:
Sa martn ê ('This is the man')
Sa karin ê ('This is the barley')

The indefinite article becomes mën under the same circumstance as -ë becomes -n:

mart më ('a man', Nom.sg)
but:
Sa mart mën ê ('This is a man')

Adjectives

Adjectives in Armenian do not decline for case or number, and precede the noun:

lav martë ('the good man', Nom.sg)
lav martun ('to the good man', Gen.sg)

Verbs

Verbs in Armenian are based on two basic series of forms, a "present" form and a "imperfect" form. From this, all other tenses and moods are formed with various particles and constructions. There is a third form, the preterite, which in Armenian is tense in its own right, and takes no other particles or constructions. (See also Armenian verbs for more detailed information.)

The "present" tense in Western Armenian is based on three conjugationss (a, e, i):

  sirel
'to love' 		khôsil
'to speak' 		gartal
'to read'

yes (I) sirem khôsim gartam

tun (you.sg) sires khôsis gartas

an (he/she/it) sirê khôsi gartay
[pron. 'garta']

menk' (we) sirenk' khôsink' gartank'

tuk' (you.pl) sirêk' khôsik' gartak'

anonk' (they) siren khôsin gartan

The present tense (as we know it in English) is made by adding the particle gë before the "present" form, while the future is made by adding bidi:

Yes gë gartam kirk'ë (I am reading the book, Pres)
Yes bidi gartam kirk'ë (I will read the book, Fut)

See also

  • Armenian language
  • Armenian verbs
  • Eastern Armenian
  • Language families and languages

External links

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Western Armenian verb table

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The following is an Western Armenian verb table. The Eastern Armenian verb table can be found here:

Conjugations

Affirmative/Interrogative

Type I

  Indicative
Present 		Imperfect Preterite Future

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

yes
tun
an
menk'
tuk'
anonk'

gë sirem
gë sires
gë sirê
gë sirenk'
gë sirêk'
gë siren

gë sirêi
gë sirêir
gë sirêr
gë sirêink'
gë sirêik'
gë sirêin

sirec'i
sirec'ir
sirec'
sirec'ink'
sirec'ik'
sirec'in

bidi sirem
bidi sires
bidi sirê
bidi sirenk'
bidi sirêk'
bidi siren

 

  Perfect Pluperfect

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

siradz em
siradz es
siradz ê
siradz enk'
siradz êk'
siradz en

siradz êi
siradz êir
siradz êr
siradz êink'
siradz êik'
siradz êin

 

  Optative
Non-Past 		Past Conditional
Non-Past

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

sirem
sires
sirê
sirenk'
sirêk'
siren

sirêi
sirêir
sirêr
sirêink'
sirêik'
sirêin

bidi sirêi
bidi sirêir
bidi sirêr
bidi sirêink'
bidi sirêik'
bidi sirêin

 

  Jussive
Non-Past 		Past Imperative
 

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

sirelu yem
sirelu yes
sirelu ê
sirelu yenk'
sirelu êk'
sirelu yen

sirelu êi
sirelu êir
sirelu êr
sirelu êink'
sirelu êik'
sirelu êin

 
sirê!
 
sirenk'!
sirec'êk'!
 

 

Infinitive
Gerund
Past Act. Participle
Past Pass. Participle
Future Participle I
Future Participle II

sirel (to love)
sirogh
sirer
siradz
sirelu
sirelik'

Type II

  Indicative
Present 		Imperfect Preterite Future

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

yes
tun
an
menk'
tuk'
anonk'

gë khôsim
gë khôsis
gë khôsi
gë khôsink'
gë khôsik'
gë khôsin

gë khôsêi
gë khôsêir
gë khôsêr
gë khôsêink'
gë khôsêik'
gë khôsêin

*khôsec'ay
khôsec'ar
*khôsec'au
khôsec'ank'
khôsec'ak'
khôsec'an

bidi khôsim
bidi khôsis
bidi khôsi
bidi khôsink'
bidi khôsik'
bidi khôsin

 

  Perfect Pluperfect

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

khôsadz em
khôsadz es
khôsadz ê
khôsadz enk'
khôsadz ek'
khôsadz en

khôsadz êi
khôsadz êir
khôsadz êr
khôsadz êink'
khôsadz êik'
khôsadz êin

 

  Optative
Non-Past 		Past Conditional
Non-Past

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

khôsim
khôsis
khôsi
khôsink'
khôsik'
khôsin

khôsêi
khôsêir
khôsêr
khôsêink'
khôsêik'
khôsêin

bidi khôsêi
bidi khôsêir
bidi khôsêr
bidi khôsêink'
bidi khôsêik'
bidi khôsêin

 

  Jussive
Non-Past 		Past Imperative
 

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

khôsilu yem
khôsilu yes
khôsilu ê
khôsilu yenk'
khôsilu êk'
khôsilu yen

khôsilu êi
khôsilu êir
khôsilu êr
khôsilu êink'
khôsilu êik'
khôsilu êin

 
khôsê!
 
khôsink'!
khôsêc'êk'!
 

 

Infinitive
Gerund
Past Act. Participle
Past Pass. Participle
Future Participle I
Future Participle II

khôsil (to speak)
khôsogh
khôser
khôsadz
khôsilu
khôsilik'

Note: the forms khôsec'ay and khôsec'au are pronounced /khôsec'a/ and /khôsec'av/, respectively.

Type III

  Indicative
Present 		Imperfect Preterite Future

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

yes
tun
an
menk'
tuk'
anonk'

gë gartam
gë gartas
*gë gartay
gë gartank'
gë gartak'
gë gartan

gë gartayi
gë gartayir
gë gartar
gë gartayink'
gë gartayik'
gë gartayin

gartac'i
gartac'ir
gartac'
gartac'ink'
gartac'ik'
gartac'in

bidi gartam
bidi gartas
bidi gartay
bidi gartank'
bidi gartak'
bidi gartan

 

  Perfect Pluperfect

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

gartac'adz em
gartac'adz es
gartac'adz ê
gartac'adz enk'
gartac'adz ek'
gartac'adz en

gartac'adz êi
gartac'adz êir
gartac'adz êr
gartac'adz êink'
gartac'adz êik'
gartac'adz êin

 

  Optative
Non-Past 		Past Conditional
Non-Past

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

gartam
gartas
*gartay
gartank'
gartak'
gartan

gartayi
gartayir
gartar
gartayink'
gartayik'
gartayin

bidi gartayi
bidi gartayir
bidi gartar
bidi gartayink'
bidi gartayik'
bidi gartayin

 

  Jussive
Non-Past 		Past Imperative
 

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

gartalu yem
gartalu yes
gartalu ê
gartalu yenk'
gartalu êk'
gartalu yen

gartalu êi
gartalu êir
gartalu êr
gartalu êink'
gartalu êik'
gartalu êin

 
garta!
 
gartank'!
gartac'êk'!
 

 

Infinitive
Gerund
Past Act. Participle
Past Pass. Participle
Future Participle I
Future Participle II

gartal (to read)
gartac'ogh
gartac'er
gartac'adz
gartalu
gartalik'

Note: the form gartay is pronounced /garta/.

Negative

Note: the formation of the negative is the same for all conjugations. The examples below are based on the first conjugation.

  Indicative
Present 		Imperfect Preterite Future

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

yes
tun
an
menk'
tuk'
anonk'

ch'em sirer
ch'es sirer
ch'ê sirer
ch'enk' sirer
ch'êk' sirer
ch'en sirer

ch'êi sirer
ch'êir sirer
ch'êr sirer
ch'êink' sirer
ch'êik' sirer
ch'êin sirer

ch'sirec'i
ch'sirec'ir
ch'sirec'
ch'sirec'ink'
ch'sirec'ik'
ch'sirec'in

bidi ch'sirem
bidi ch'sires
bidi ch'sirê
bidi ch'sirenk'
bidi ch'sirêk'
bidi ch'siren

 

  Perfect Pluperfect

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

ch'em siradz
ch'es siradz
ch'ê siradz
ch'enk' siradz
ch'êk' siradz
ch'en siradz

ch'êi siradz
ch'êir siradz
ch'êr siradz
ch'êink' siradz
ch'êik' siradz
ch'êin siradz

 

  Optative
Non-Past 		Past Conditional
Non-Past

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

ch'sirem
ch'sires
ch'sirê
ch'sirenk'
ch'sirêk'
ch'siren

ch'sirêi
ch'sirêir
ch'sirêr
ch'sirêink'
ch'sirêik'
ch'sirêin

bidi ch'sirêi
bidi ch'sirêir
bidi ch'sirêr
bidi ch'sirêink'
bidi ch'sirêik'
bidi ch'sirêin

 

  Jussive
Non-Past 		Past Imperative
 

1sg
2sg
3sg
1pl
2pl
3pl

ch'em sirelu
ch'es sirelu
ch'ê sirelu
ch'enk' sirelu
ch'êk' sirelu
ch'en sirelu

ch'êi sirelu
ch'êir sirelu
ch'êr sirelu
ch'êink' sirelu
ch'êik' sirelu
ch'êin sirelu

 
mi sirer!
 
 
mi sirêk'!
 

 

Infinitive
Gerund
Past Act. Participle
Past Pass. Participle
Future Participle I
Future Participle II

ch'sirel (to not love)
ch'sirogh
ch'sirer
ch'siradz
ch'sirelu
ch'sirelik'

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western Armenian verb table."

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Western Christianity

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Western Christianity refers collectively to Catholicism and Protestantism, especially when speaking more about what they share in common than about the ways they differ. One of the principal respects in which Western Christianity differs from Eastern Christianity is its doctrine of original sin. Historically, Western Christianity developed in Europe, whereas Eastern Christianity developed in the Near East. Today, however, the geographical distinction is not nearly as absolute.

See also:

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Western countries

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The term Western countries (sometimes the West or the Occident) is somewhat imprecisely defined - derived from the old dualism of East (Asia) and West (Europe) - now used to refer to wealthy and industrialised countries, as the inheritants of European societies, and their colonial legacies. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for the Western societies.

Depending on context, the Western countries may be restricted to the founding members of NATO in addition to Germany, Spain, and the non-aligned Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. A broader definition might extend to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Israel and some of the more prosperous Warsaw Pact states.

Latin America is sometimes considered part of the West and sometimes not. Mainland China, the remainder of the Middle East, India, and Russia are generally not considered part of the West.

Western countries have in common a high (relative) standard of living for most citizens - compared to the rest of the world. They may also have democratic, (mostly secular) governments, and developed bodies of laws that have some expression of rights (for its own citizens) in law. Also, high levels of education, and a similar, "modern" popular culture may reflect the Western or Westernized society. Militarily and diplomatically, these "Western" societies have generally been allied with each other to one degree or another since World War Two. In fact, some would argue that this is the definition of the West and explains why Japan is usually considered Western while Ecuador is not.

More typically, the term "The West" contains a pejorative meaning - simply to describe and deliniate the wealthy and dominant societies from the poorer societies - those who are subjugated economically, miltarily, and otherwise, by deliberate restraints placed on them by the wealthier ones. "The West" then becomes simply a term to mean: "Wealthy, Colonial (slave-holding), Europe-descended (or allied) societies." The derived meaning of the above, in current use, tends to translate as: "Those who control the world" or "Those who seek to continue in domination of others and their lands."

Oftentimes use of the term "The West" was motivated by racist attitudes towards Slavic Europeans, in that the term was not encompassing of them whereas "Europe" is.

The term The North has in many contexts replaced earlier usage of the term "the west", particularly in this critical sense. It is a little more coherent, because there is some absolute geographical definition of "northern countries", and this distinction statistically happens to capture most wealthy countries (and many wealthy regions within countries).

Evolution

The concept of The West, of course, has changed over time. Japan in 1955, (immediately after its occupation by the US) would be considered by most to be part of the West - while Japan in 1750 would not. Similarly, North America in 1850 would be considered part of the West while it would not be in 1450, or 1500, even - before substantial colonization had occurred.

There are ideals that some associate with the West, and there are many who consider Western values to be universally superior. The author Francis Fukuyama argues that Western values are destined to triumph over the entire world.

However, there are many who question the meaning of the notion of Western values and point out that societies such as Japan and the United States are very different. Furthermore, they point out that advocates of Western values are selective in what they include as Western; usually including for example the concepts of freedom, democracy, and free trade, but not Communism and Nazism, both of which began in the West, or slavery, which reached massive levels in the West, and whose history in the West goes back millennia. Therefore by selecting what values are part of Western values one can tautologically show that they are superior, since any inferior values by definition are not Western.

A different attack on the concept of Western values is advocated by those who advocate Islamic values or Asian values. In this view, there are a coherent set of traits that define the West, but those traits are inferior and are usually associated with moral decline, greed, and decadence.

Historically, one of the interesting questions is how did the societies associated with "the West" come to dominate the world between 1750 and 1950.

See also: OECD, Group of Eight, Eastern bloc, Third World, Pacific Rim

The West also refers to the Western United States, especially during the period of settlement, see The Western Frontier

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western countries."

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Western Grey Kangaroo

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Western Grey Kangaroo
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Mammalia
Subclass:Marsupialia
Order:Diprotodontia
Family:Macropodidae
Genus:Macropus
Species:fuliginosus
Binomial name
Macropus fuliginosus

The Western Grey Kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosis) is a large and very common macropod, found across almost the entire southern part of Australia, from just south of Shark Bay to coastal South Australia, western Victoria, and the entire Murray-Darling Basin in New South Wales and Queensland.

Long known to the Aboriginal people of Australia, for Europeans, the Western Grey was the centre of a great deal of sometimes comical taxonomic confusion for almost 200 years. It was first noted by European settlers when the great explorer Matthew Flinders landed on Kangaroo Island in 1802. Flinders shot several for food but assumed that they were Eastern Grey Kangaroos. In 1803 French explorers captured several Kangaroo Island Western Greys and shipped them hom to Paris, where they lived in the zoological gardens for some years. Eventually, researchers at the Paris Museum of Natural History recognised that these animals were indeed different and formally described the species as Macropus fuliginosus in 1817. Unfortunately, for reasons that remain unclear, it was described as native to Tasmania!

There the matter rested for over 100 years, and it was not until 1917 that researchers realised that the "Forester Kangaroo" of Tasmania was in fact Macropus giganteus, the same Eastern Grey Kangaroo that was, and still is, widespread in the more fertile south-eastern part of the mainland. By 1971, it was understood that the Kangaroo Island species was the same as the kangaroos of southern Western Australia, and that this population exended through much of the eastern part of the continent s well. For a time, three subspecies were described, two on the mainland and one on Kangaroo Island. Finally, by the early 1990s, the current understanding energed.

There are two subspecies of the Western Grey: Macropus fuliginosus fuliginosus of Kangaroo Island, and Macropus fuliginosus melanops, which has a range of different forms that intergrade clinallly from west to east.


Western Grey Kangaroo with joey.
Larger version

The Western Grey is not found in the tropical north or the fertile south-east of Australia, and the Eastern Grey does not extend beyond the NSW-South Australia border, but the two species are both common in the Murray-Darling Basin area. They never interbreed in the wild, although it has proved possible to produce hybrids between Eastern Grey females and Western Grey males in captivity.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western Grey Kangaroo."

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Western movie

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Attempt at defining Western

The Western movie is one of the classic American film genres. Westerns are films devoted to telling tales of the American West (see Westward Expansion in History of the United States). While the western has been popular throughout the history of movies, as the United States progresses farther away from the period depicted, the western has begun to diminish in importance, though (as of August 2003) it has been revived with the Kevin Costner western Open Range.

The fundamental plots of Westerns are simple. Life is reduced to its elements: there are no computers, no cellphones, no carss, no electricity. None of the complications and technology of modern life. You have:

  1. The clothes on your back.
  2. Your gun, and
  3. Your horse.

And that's about it. The horse may be optional. The art of the Western takes these simple elements and tell simple morality stories, setting them against the spectacular scenery of the American West. The best Western directors practically made / make the scenery an unpaid star of the movie.

American popular culture seems fascinated with cultures of honor, as opposed to cultures of law. Hollywood cultivates a vision of a society in which individuals have no recourse to a social order much larger than their immediate peers, family, or perhaps themselves alone. Here, people must cultivate a fearsome reputation by acts of disproportionate revenge; they can be generous, because in this world generosity creates a dependency relationship and a social hierarchy. These themes unite the Western, the gangster movie, and the revenge movie in a single vision. In the Western, these themes are forefronted, to the extent that the arrival of law and "civilization" is often portrayed as regrettable, if inevitable.

The idea of the "Wild West" traces at least to Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows that began in 1883. In literature Owen Wister's The Virginian (published in 1902) was an American start, but the German writer Karl May was writing Wild West stories as early as 1876, and he traced ideas at least to the American writer James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote Last of the Mohicans in 1826.

Thus the "western idea" has a long history. They were a distinct literary genre before the rise of motion pictures; other important writers were Zane Grey, and Louis L'Amour.

But a genre in which description and dialogue are lean, and the landscape spectacular, is clearly better suited to a visual medium. Western movies, usually filmed on location in desolate corners of Arizona, Utah, Wyoming or Colorado, made the landscape not just a vivid backdrop but essentially a character in the movie.

The Western genre itself has sub-genres, such as the epic Western, the shoot 'em up, singing cowboy Westerns, and a few comedy Westerns.

Cowboys play a prominent role in Western movies, and often fights with American Indians are depicted. When the mistreatment of the Native American nations became more well known in the late 20th Century, the roles were often reversed, with the Natives being the sympathetic characters. Other recurring themes of westerns include treks travelling west, and groups of bandits terrorizing small towns.

In film, the western traces its roots back to The Great Train Robbery, a short silent film directed by Edwin S. Porter and released in 1903. In the United States, the western has had an extremely rich history that spans many genres (comedy, drama, tragedy, parody, musical, etc.) The golden age of the western film is epitomised by the work of two directors: John Ford (who often used John Wayne for lead roles) and Howard Hawks.

During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a considerable revival with the "Spaghetti Westerns" or "Italo-Westerns", most notably those directed by Sergio Leone. These tended to be fairly low-budget affairs, shot in locations principally chosen for the cheapness of shooting film, and are characterised by high-action and violent content. Clint Eastwood became famous starring in these films, although they were also to provide a showcase for other such considerable talents as Lee van Cleef, James Coburn, and Klaus Kinski.

To add to the international influences on westerns, many westerns after 1960 were heavily influenced by the Japanese samurai films of Akira Kurosawa (for instance The Magnificient Seven was a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai).

Also, beginning in the 1960s, many people questioned many traditional themes of westerns, aside from the portrayal of the Native American as a "savages", audiences began to question the simple hero versus villian dualism, and the use of violence to test one's character or to prove oneself right. Examples of "revisionist westerns" include Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven.

An offshoot of the western genre is the "post-apocalyptic" western, in which a future society, struggling to rebuild after a major catastrophe, is portrayed in a manner very similar to the 19th century frontier. Examples include The Postman and the "Mad Max" series.

In fact, many elements of space travel series and films borrow extensively from the conventions of the western genre. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series, once described his vision for the show as "Wagon Train to the stars".

The western genre has been parodied on a number of occasions, famous examples being Support Your Local Sheriff, Cat Ballou, and Mel Brooks' classic Blazing Saddles.

The Saturday Afternoon Movie was a pre-TV phenomenon in the US which often featured western series. "Singing cowboys" were common (Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Rex Allen, each with a co-starring horse). Other B-movie series were Lash Larue and the Durango Kid. Herbert Jeffreys, as Bob Blake with his horse Stardust appeared in a number of movies made for African American audiences in the days of segregated movie theaters. [1]. Bill Pickett, an African American rodeo performer also appeared in early western films for the same audience [1].

When the popularity of television exploded in the late 1940s and 1950s, westerns quickly became a staple of small screen entertainment. A great many B-movie Westerns were aired on TV as time fillers, while a number of long-running TV Westerns became classics in their own right. Notable TV Westerns include Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Have Gun, Will Travel, Ponderosa, The Big Valley, and many others.

See also: TV Western

Notable figures in the Western

  • Gene Autry, actor
  • James Coburn, actor
  • Gary Cooper, actor
  • Clint Eastwood, actor
  • John Ford, director of dramas of tragic intensity.
  • Howard Hawks, director
  • Sergio Leone, Italian director who added to the Western genre.

  • Maureen O'Hara. actress
  • Gregory Peck, actor
  • Sam Peckinpah, director
  • James Stewart, actor
  • Lee van Cleef, actor
  • John Wayne, archetype and actor who appeared in many of Ford's films.

Notable Westerns

  • Annie Get Your Gun
  • Blazing Saddles- The most popular parody of westerns in film history.
  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, two outlaws on the run)
  • Dances With Wolves (1991)
  • Destry Rides Again (1939, pacifist sheriff)
  • Dodge City (city cleaned up by new sheriff)
  • For a Few Dollars More (1965, Sergio Leone's story of bounty hunters; spaghetti western)
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, in Italian) (1966, Sergio Leone's take on the Old West and the American Civil War; another spaghetti western; considered by many the best Western ever made — this is of course disputed.)
  • The Great Train Robbery (1903, not only the first Western ever made, but the first American film that told a sustained story)
  • Heaven's Gate
  • High Noon (1952, Gary Cooper, a small town under siege)
  • Hud (1963, steamy love between a drifter and a married woman)
  • Little Big Man (1970, About a boy raised by The Sioux Nation assuming various roles in the Old West, including a guide who arranged the fanatical General George Armstrong Custer's defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn), starring Dustin Hoffman; a "revisionist" Western where American Indians receive more sympathetic treatment)
  • The Magnificent Seven (1960, a small town under siege, based on a film by Akira Kurosawa)
  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, James Stewart, John Wayne and Lee Marvin)
  • My Darling Clementine (1946, the story of the Gunfight at the O. K. Corral)
  • My Name is Trinity (a drifter and his brother, posing as a sheriff, defending a town against a rapacious cattle baron; spaghetti western)
  • Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone's tale of Western revenge; spaghetti western)
  • Open Range (a "modern" epic Western starring Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall, and Annette Bening in a distinctly feminist role.)
  • The Ox-Bow Incident (1943, Henry Fonda in a tale of Frontier justice)
  • Red River (1948, John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in a saga of a cattle drive from Texas to Kansas)
  • Rio Bravo (1959, John Wayne as a small town's sheriff asking a motley posse to help him keep order in his town; Angie Dickinson, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson have starring roles)
  • Ruggles of Red Gap (an English valet takes on the West)
  • The Searchers (1956, John Wayne searches for his niece, who was stolen by Indians)
  • Stagecoach (1939, John Ford's classic about a motley group of travelers thrown together on a stagecoach attacked by Indians)
  • Trinity Is STILL My Name (two brothers swear to their father that they will become outlaws; spaghetti western)
  • True Grit (1969, John Wayne)
  • Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood's Academy Award winning movie about Wild West revenge)
  • The Wild Bunch (1969, Sam Peckinpah and the violent West at its end in the early 20th century; a car is seen in one scene)

External links and references

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Western Pomerania

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Western Pomerania (also West Pomerania, Szczecin Pomerania, Odra Pomerania) is a geographical and historical region in the west of Pomerania in northern Poland.

In the wider sense it also covers Middle Pomerania and Fore Pomerania in Germany

Major cities: Szczecin, Stargard Szczecinski, Swinoujscie

See also: Dukes of Pomerania, West Pomeranian Voivodship

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western Pomerania."

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Western province

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The western province is the most densly populated part of Sri Lanka. It's home to the capital Sri Jayawardanapura as well as Colombo - the business center.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western province."

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Western society

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The term Western society frequently refers to the societies of Europe and their genealogical, colonial, and philosophical descendants. It is in contrast to Eastern societies; those of Asian origin, and their descendant cultures. The term is often used simply as a synonym of the Western countries.

Western society may follow a chain beginning with the philosophers of Athens such as Solon and Socrates. It continued through the Roman Empire and, with the addition of Christianity (which had its origins in the East), spread throughout Europe. During the colonial era, it became implanted in the Americas and in Australasia.

One should distinguish "Western society" from the socio-economic term "first world" in that, for example, South America is sometimes mentioned as a Western society, but much of it is poor. Japan is wealthy and part of the "first world" but is not Western from a cultural standpoint. Compare the North.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western society."

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Western text-type

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The Western text-type is a diverse group of manuscripts of the New Testament whose text is similar to that of early Christian writers in Rome and Gaul, including Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. These texts tend toward longer passages than is found in the other groups of texts, frequently augmented with glosses, additional details, and the original passages are replaced with longer paraphrases. In at least two Western texts, the Gospels appear in a variant order: Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. The term "Western" is a bit of a misnomer because members of the Western text-type have been found in the Christian East, including Syria.

The most prominent witnesses to the Western text-type are Codex Bezae in the Gospels and Codex Claromontanus in Paul's letters as well as the Old Latin and Old Syriac versions.

Codex Sinaiticus is Western in the first eight chapters of John.

See also: Alexandrian text-type, Byzantine text-type, Caesarean text-type.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western text-type."

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Western, Nebraska

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Western is a village located in Saline County, Nebraska. As of the 2000 census, the village had a total population of 287.

Geography


Western is located at 40°23'31" North, 97°11'54" West (40.392050, -97.198259)1. According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.2 km² (0.4 mi²). 1.2 km² (0.4 mi²) of it is land and none of it is covered by water.

Demographics


As of the census of 2000, there are 287 people, 128 households, and 86 families residing in the village. The population density is 246.2/km² (644.2/mi²). There are 151 housing units at an average density of 129.6/km² (338.9/mi²). The racial makeup of the village is 97.91% White, 0.00% African American, 0.70% Native American, 0.00% Asian, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 0.00% from other races, and 1.39% from two or more races. 0.00% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 128 households out of which 24.2% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.4% are married couples living together, 3.9% have a female householder with no husband present, and 32.8% are non-families. 28.1% of all households are made up of individuals and 18.0% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.24 and the average family size is 2.73. In the village the population is spread out with 21.3% under the age of 18, 6.3% from 18 to 24, 23.0% from 25 to 44, 19.9% from 45 to 64, and 29.6% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 44 years. For every 100 females there are 86.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 93.2 males. The median income for a household in the village is $31,750, and the median income for a family is $41,250. Males have a median income of $26,250 versus $20,804 for females. The per capita income for the village is $16,175. 2.1% of the population and 2.6% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 0.0% are under the age of 18 and 7.1% are 65 or older.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western, Nebraska."

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Western, New York

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Western is a town located in Oneida County, New York. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 2,029.

Geography


According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 141.7 km² (54.7 mi²). 133.0 km² (51.4 mi²) of it is land and 8.7 km² (3.3 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 6.11% water.

Demographics


As of the census of 2000, there are 2,029 people, 752 households, and 573 families residing in the town. The population density is 15.3/km² (39.5/mi²). There are 833 housing units at an average density of 6.3/km² (16.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the town is 97.54% White, 0.20% African American, 0.69% Native American, 0.59% Asian, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 0.00% from other races, and 0.99% from two or more races. 0.59% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 752 households out of which 35.2% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 62.8% are married couples living together, 7.8% have a female householder with no husband present, and 23.7% are non-families. 19.3% of all households are made up of individuals and 7.3% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.70 and the average family size is 3.10. In the town the population is spread out with 27.1% under the age of 18, 5.8% from 18 to 24, 30.8% from 25 to 44, 22.9% from 45 to 64, and 13.4% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 38 years. For every 100 females there are 107.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 106.6 males. The median income for a household in the town is $42,337, and the median income for a family is $46,629. Males have a median income of $32,171 versus $27,097 for females. The per capita income for the town is $20,217. 8.0% of the population and 3.8% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 9.4% are under the age of 18 and 3.6% are 65 or older.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Western, New York."

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Abbreviations & Acronyms: Western

The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted.
EntrySourceExpressionField
WEE-virusDanishWestern equine encephalitis-virusMedicine
WEEnglishWestern ElectricComputing

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Synonyms: Western

Synonyms: country(a) (adj), folk(a) (adj), hillbilly (adj), westerly (adj), western(a) (adj), horse opera (n), western sandwich (n). (additional references)
Antonym: eastern (adj). (additional references)

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Synonyms within Context: Western

ContextSynonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).

Laterality

Eastern; orient, oriental; Levantine; Western, occidental, Hesperian.

The Drama

Western, horse opera; flick; spy film, love story, adventure film, documentary, nature film; pornographic film, smoker, skin flick, X-rated film.

Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

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Crosswords: Western

English words defined with "western": capital of Western Samoa ♦ Western Australia, Western Australia coral pea, Western balsam poplar, western big-eared bat, Western birch, western black-legged tick, western blind snake, Western box turtle, western buttercup, western chimpanzee, western chokecherry, western crab apple, Western empire, western fence lizard, western gray squirrel, western hemlock, Western Islands, Western Isles, western kingbird, western larch, Western Malayo-Polynesian, western meadowlark, Western mountain ash, western narrow-mouthed toad, Western paper birch, Western pasqueflower, western pipistrel, western redbud, Western Samoa, Western Samoan monetary unit, Western sand cherry, western sandwich, western saxifrage, western skink, western tamarack, western tanager, western wall flower, western wheatgrass, western white pine, western wood pewee, western yellow pine. (references)
Specialty definitions using "western": prime western spelter ♦ Western Digital Corporation, western equine encephalitis, western equine encephalomyelitis. (references)
Etymologies containing "western": Vatican. (references)
Non-English Usage: "Western" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses.

French (horse opera, western), German (horseopera, western), Hungarian (horse opera, western), Italian (western), Spanish (horse opera, western).

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Modern Usage: Western

DomainUsage

Screenplays

She has her doctorate in speech impedimentology from Case Western. (Being John Malkovich; writing credit: Charlie Kaufman)

We got country and western. (The Blues Brothers; writing credit: Dan Aykroyd and John Landis.)

Because I believe you will buy booze with it. I just want to get from the car to my office without being confronted by the decay of western society (Liar Liar; writing credit: Paul Guay; Stephen Mazur)

You see, that's how a great western is supposed to end. The hero gets a kiss from the pretty girl (The Lost World; writing credit: Alison Lea Bingeman)

Do you realize in the entire history of western civilization no one has successfully accomplished the Roommate Switch (Seinfeld; writing credit: Andreas Lenze; Bea Schmidt)

Lyrics

And the unsung Western hero killed an Indian or three (Hymn 43; performing artist: Jethro Tull)

On we sweep with threshing oar, Our only goal will be the western shore (Immigrant song; performing artist: Led Zeppelin)

And all of western civilization (Californication; performing artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Coast to coast, LA to Chicago, western male (SMOOTH OPERATOR; performing artist: Sade; writing credit: Sade Adu and St. John)

Movie/TV Titles

The Great Western Musical Thunderbox (1974)

Western History (1971)

Settlement of the Western Plains (1965)

Saga of Western Man (1964)

The Country and Western Show (1963)

Song Titles

WESTERN MOVIES  (performing artist: Olympics )

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Western

DomainTitle

References

  • Bank of Western Australia Ltd.: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (reference)

  • Canadian Western Bank: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (reference)

  • National Western Life Insurance Company: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (reference)

  • Western Areas Limited: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (reference)

  • Western Bancorp: International Competitive Benchmarks and Financial Gap Analysis (reference)

    (more reference examples)

  

Books

  • From Dawn to Decadence : 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (reference)

  • A Pictorial Record of Great Western Absorbed Engines (reference)

  • Ramses: Under the Western Acacia (Ramses Under the Western Acadia, Vol 5) (reference)

  • The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (reference)

  • Auriculotherapy Manual: Chinese and Western Systems of Ear Acupuncture (reference)

    (more book examples)

  

Periodicals

  

Theater & Movies

  • Landmarks of Western Art, Volume 3: Baroque to Neoclassicism (reference)

  • Switzerland: Berner Alps, Western Switzerland (reference)

  • Ireland: Western Ireland, Dublin and Belfast (reference)

  • Calgary to Victoria, a journey across Western Canada (reference)

  • Arvo Part - St. John Passion / Hillier, The Hilliard Ensemble, Western Wind Choir (reference)

    (more DVD examples; more video examples)

  

Music

  

High Tech

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Image Slideshow: Western

Photos:
Western

More pictures...

Illustrations:
Western

More pictures...

Computer Images:
Western

More pictures...

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Photo Album: Western

ThumbnailDescription & CreditThumbnailDescription & Credit

A row of teeth arises from a large sclerotized plate borne laterally on the eighth abdominal segment. Uranotaenia have characteristically shaped heads, longer than wide. All but one Western species have four stout spines on the head. Credit: CDC.

False positive tests results using the ELISA tests will require secondary testing using this Western blot, immunoblotting procedure. The bound antigens are detected when tagged with antibodies during analysis of the nitrocellulose sheet. Credit: CDC.

Western Wildfires Increase Throughout August. Credit: NASA.

Dense Smoke Plumes Visible From Western Fires. Credit: NASA.

These cloud formations were seen over the western Aleutian Islands. Their color variations are probably due to differences in temperature and in the size of water droplets that make up the clouds. Credit: NASA.

The western region of Australia's Great Sandy Desert is an area almost devoid of sand, but characterized by complex geology. Credit: NASA.

A happy face cactus in the Galapagos Islands During western hemisphere magnetic project. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection.

Map of the 39th Parallel Arc The first great geodetic arc in the western hemisphere. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection.

"Indian Canoe Races, Anacortes". In: "Puget Sound and Western Washington Cities-Towns Scenery", by Robert A. Reid, Robert A. Reid Publisher, Seattle, 1912. P. 108. Credit: America's Coastlines.

"The Russia Cement Company's Plant at Anacortes". This plant made glue and other products from fish processing waste, not cement. In: "Puget Sound and Western Washington Cities-Towns Scenery", by Robert A. Reid, Robert A. Reid Publisher, Seattle, 1912. P. 108. Credit: America's Coastlines.

Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Digital Photo Gallery: Western
 

"Western Windmill" by Lynn Cummings
Commentary: "The western windmill is a common site here in the US midwest."		"Drumdow" by Olav Jordal
Commentary: "View from outside Drumdow in South Western Scotland."

Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.

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Sounds Captioned with "Western".

PlayCaptionPlayCaption
Stagecoach; horse; trot; neigh; transportation; transport; western union.Cowboy; western; organ.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Familiar Quotations: Western

AuthorQuotation

Octavio Paz

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

President Lyndon B. Johnson

We don't propose to sit here in our rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communists set up any government in the Western Hemisphere.

Walter Lippmann

If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe.
The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Historic Usage: Western

AuthorDateQuotation

Treaty of Versailles

1919

In the area between the southern frontier of East Prussia, as described in Article 28 of Part II (Boundaries of Germany) of the present Treaty, and the line described below, the inhabitants will be called upon to indicate by a vote the State to which they wish to belong: The western and northern boundary of Regierungsbezirk Allenstein to its junction with the boundary between the Kreise of Oletsko and Angerburg; thence, the northern boundary of the Kreis of Oletsko to its junction with the old frontier of East Prussia. (reference)

Winston S. Churchill

1946

We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. ("Iron Curtain" Speech)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Use in Literature: Western

TitleAuthorQuote

Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck, John

The Western States are nervous under the beginning change

Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Western

SubjectTopicQuote

Health

Periodic epidemics have occurred in the Western Hemisphere for over 200 years. (references)

Plague also has been reported in scattered foci in western and northern Africa. (references)

Western equine encephalitis virus, member of the family Togaviridae, genus Alphavirus. (references)

Business

Competition could came only from other western companies. (references)

China is exploiting its western region for oil production. (references)

This is four times more than in most Western European countries. (references)

Civil Liberties

Greece

Others proceeded to Western Europe, often applying for asylum there. (references)

United Arab Emirates

Dubai Media City hosts a wide range of Western and Arab media outlets. (references)

Saudi Arabia

The authorities prohibit the study of evolution, Freud, Marx, Western music, and Western philosophy. (references)

Economic History

New Zealand

New Zealand is a stable western democracy. (references)

Dominican Republic

Markets--U.S. (72%), Canada, western Europe. (references)

Slovak Rep

Most food prices remain well below Western levels. (references)

Human Rights

United Arab Emirates

The military has its own court system based on Western military judicial practice. (references)

Afghanistan

In July 2000, a Western journalist observed his Afghan associate being beaten severely. (references)

Namibia

In 2000 approximately 15 Kxoe men were arrested during a security sweep in western Caprivi. (references)

Indigenous People

Australia

Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Commission (ATSIC) welcomed this repeal and called upon Western Australia to follow suit. (references)

Suriname

The leaders threatened to isolate the western part of the country if the Government did not take measures against uncontrolled logging near indigenous villages. (references)

Australia

Western Australia continued to retain its mandatory sentencing laws, which provide that a person (adult or juvenile) who commits the crime of home burglary three or more times is subject to a mandatory minimum prison sentence. (references)

Minorities

Cameroon

The Bamoun ethnic group of the western provinces also is largely Muslim. (references)

South Africa

PAGAD is most active in the Western Cape but also has branches elsewhere in the country. (references)

Bhutan

Drukpa is based on the customs of the non-ethnic Nepalese Ngalong ethnic group predominant in the western part of the country. (references)

Political Economy

Western Sahara

There is little organized labor activity in the Western Sahara. (references)

HAITI

Haiti already is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. (references)

Western Sahara

Moroccan unions are present in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara but are not active. (references)

Political Rights

Ukraine

Very high voter turnouts, particularly in western districts, aroused suspicion of ballot stuffing on President Kuchma's behalf in the second round of voting. (references)

Trade

Poland

This helps to open the market for western goods. (references)

Hungary

Most high-tech western technology can flow to Hungary without export licenses. (references)

Travel

Saudi Arabia

Supermarkets are well stocked with Western products. (references)

Latvia

Hospital services are not equal to Western standards. (references)

Turkey

Most company executives were educated in western countries. (references)

Women

Senegal

However, a few women's rights activists criticized the new legislation because they perceived it as being dictated by Western donors. (references)

South Africa

In a MRC study of 1,800 working men in the Western Cape Province over a 10-year period, 22 percent reported forcing their wives or girlfriends to have sex. (references)

Liberia

FGM, which is condemned widely by international public health experts as damaging to both physical and psychological health, traditionally was performed on young girls in northern, western, and central ethnic groups, particularly in rural areas. (references)

Worker Rights

Ghana

Women are also trafficked to Western Europe, mostly Germany and the Netherlands. (references)

Lithuania

Women from Lithuania are trafficked mostly to Western Europe and the Middle East. (references)

Korea

He admitted to the smuggling of women to Japan and Western countries for purposes of prostitution. (references)

Lexicography

Devil's Dictionary

TOPE, v. To tipple, booze, swill, soak, guzzle, lush, bib, or swig. In the individual, toping is regarded with disesteem, but toping nations are in the forefront of civilization and power. When pitted against the hard-drinking Christians the absemious Mahometans go down like grass before the scythe. In India one hundred thousand beef- eating and brandy-and-soda guzzling Britons hold in subjection two hundred and fifty million vegetarian abstainers of the same Aryan race. With what an easy grace the whisky-loving American pushed the temperate Spaniard out of his possessions! From the time when the Berserkers ravaged all the coasts of western Europe and lay drunk in every conquered port it has been the same way: everywhere the nations that drink too much are observed to fight rather well and not too righteously. Wherefore the estimable old ladies who abolished the canteen from the American army may justly boast of having materially augmented the nation's military power.

Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

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Spoken Usage: Western

SpeakerPhrase(s)

Dennis Miller

They're a democracy trying to abide by Western norms in a region that does not play by those rules.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Speeches: Western

SpeakerTermPhrase(s)

George Washington

1789-1797The establishment of additional cross posts, especially to some of the important points in the Western and Northern parts of the Union, can not fail to be of material utility.

Thomas Jefferson

1801-1809On the western side of the Mississippi she advanced in considerable force, and took post at the settlement of Bayou Pierre, on the Red River.

John Quincy Adams

1825-1829This accession to the profits of agriculture in the middle and western portions of our Union is accidental and temporary.

Herbert C. Hoover

1929-1933While we have had wars in the Western Hemisphere, yet on the whole the record is in encouraging contrast with that of other parts of the world.

Harry S. Truman

1945-1953That is true in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in the Western Hemisphere.

Dwight Eisenhower

1953-1961In Europe, we ask that enlightened and inspired leaders of the Western nations strive with renewed vigor to make the unity of their peoples a reality.

John F. Kennedy

1961-1963I am confident that other nations of the Western Hemisphere would be prepared to do likewise.

Lyndon B. Johnson

1963-1969Among those efforts, that of Western Europe has a very special place in America's concern.

Jimmy Carter

1977-1981Two world wars have made clear our stake in Western Europe and the North Atlantic area.

Ronald Reagan

1981-1989There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Usage Frequency: Western

"Western" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 74.42% of the time. "Western" is used about 9,818 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words		Rank in English
Adjective (general or positive)74.42%7,3061,322
Noun (proper)25.34%2,4873,630
Noun (singular)0.24%2471,196
                    Total100.00%9,818N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Name Usage Frequency: Western

The following table summarizes the usage of "western" based on a population census conducted in the United States. Ranks and frequencies are based on all names reported and classified.
NameUsage/GenderUsage per 100
million Persons		Rank in USA
WesternLast name1,0008,423
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Derived & Related Names: Western

The following table summarizes names derived from the word "western".
 
NameGenderLanguageMeaning
WesleyMaleEnglish

A western meadow

WestonMaleEnglish

A western town

Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

 

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Usage in Company Names: Western

CountryNameCountryName
Australia

Bank of Western Australia Ltd.

Canada

Canadian Western Bank

India

Western Hatcheries Ltd.

Norway

Western Bulk Shipping ASA

South Africa

Western Areas Limited

USA

Bindley Western Industries Inc.

 (more examples...)  

Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.

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Cities: Western


1. Western, NE (village, FIPS 52295)
Location: 40.39311 N, 97.19935 W
Population (1990): 264 (133 housing units)
Area: 1.2 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)
Zip Code(s): 68464
Country: USA

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Expressions: Western

Expressions using "western": capital of Western Samoa ♦ country and western ♦ spaghetti western ♦ Western Australia ♦ Western Australia coral pea ♦ Western ax ♦ Western axe ♦ Western balsam poplar ♦ Western birch ♦ western blackberry ♦ western blind snake ♦ Western box turtle ♦ western buttercup ♦ western chimpanzee ♦ western Chinquapin ♦ western chokecherry ♦ western Church ♦ western coral snake ♦ western crab apple ♦ western cuisine ♦ western dewberry ♦ Western diamondback ♦ Western diamondback rattlesnake ♦ Western Digital ♦ western Digital Corporation ♦ western dwarf mistletoe ♦ western empire ♦ western equine encephalitis ♦ western equine encephalomyelitis ♦ western europe ♦ western fence lizard ♦ western fiction ♦ western food ♦ western grape root worm ♦ western gray squirrel ♦ Western Grove ♦ western hemisphere ♦ western hemlock ♦ Western Hills ♦ western holly fern ♦ Western honey mesquite ♦ Western Islands ♦ Western Isles ♦ western kingbird ♦ western ladies' tresses ♦ western larch ♦ western lowland gorilla ♦ western meadowlark ♦ Western mountain ash ♦ western mugwort ♦ western music ♦ western omelet ♦ Western Ontario and McMaster Universities ♦ Western paper birch ♦ Western pasqueflower ♦ western pipistrel ♦ western poison oak ♦ western poppy ♦ western prince's pine ♦ western ragweed ♦ Western rattlesnake ♦ western red cedar ♦ western redbud ♦ Western ribbon snake ♦ Western saddle ♦ Western Sahara ♦ western samoa ♦ Western Samoan monetary unit ♦ Western sand cherry ♦ western sandwich ♦ western saxifrage ♦ western schism ♦ Western silvery aster ♦ western skink ♦ western spadefoot ♦ Western Springs ♦ western tamarack ♦ western tanager ♦ western toad ♦ western wall flower ♦ western wallflower ♦ western wheatgrass ♦ western whiptail ♦ western white pine ♦ western wood pewee ♦ western world ♦ western yellow pine ♦ western yew. Additional references.

Hyphenated Usage

Beginning with "western": western-backed, western-barred, western-based, western-blot, western-centricness, western-controlled, western-dominated, western-dressed, western-educated, western-european, western-financed, western-held, western-influenced, western-inspired, western-language, western-led, western-like, western-looking, western-made, western-orchestrated, western-orientated, western-oriented, western-produced, western-sponsored, western-standard, western-style, Western-super-mare, western-type.

Ending with "western": anti-western, country-and-western, mecklenburg-western, mid-western, non-western, north-western, pro-western, south-western.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Western

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day		ExpressionFrequency
per Day

best western

12,727

all quiet on the western front

432

western union

8,485

western australia

429

best western hotel

4,022

country western music

428

western digital

2,451

western carolina university

420

western wear

2,172

western university of

413

western

1,983

best western.com

411

western michigan university

1,200

case western reserve university

371

western clothing

1,134

kennedy western university

358

best western motel

894

western wedding

353

university of western ontario

764

western producer

335

western art

756

apparel western

327

western furniture

680

western auto

304

western movie

679

virginia western community college

289

western washington university

665

western open

284

western decor

619

western shirt

267

western kentucky university

602

western oregon university

260

western saddle

598

western digital hard drive

260

western boot

483

housing pacific western

206

best western inn

460

western union.com

203

western illinois university

456

case western reserve

199
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translation: Western

Language Translations for "western"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.

Afrikaans

  

Westers, westelik. (various references)

   

Albanian

  

perëndimor (occidental, West, westerly, westerner, westward), nga perëndimi (westerly, westward), film vestern. (various references)

   

Arabic 

  

‏فيلم رعاة البقر (horse opera), ‏غربي (occidental, west, westerly), ‏الغربية رواية تصف حياة الغرب, ‏الغربي (westerner). (various references)

   

Bulgarian 

  

уестърн, каубойски роман, каубойски филм, от запад (westerly), на запад (westerly, westwardly, westwards), западен (hesperian, occidental, westwardly). (various references)

   

Chinese 

  

西部 (West). (various references)

   

Czech

  

západní (occidental, West, westerly, westward), film z divokého západu. (various references)

   

Danish

  

vestlig. (various references)

   

Dutch

  

Westers. (various references)

   

Esperanto

  

okcidenta. (various references)

   

Farsi 

  

وابسته به مغرب یاباختر (Westerner), غربی (Westerner), باختری (Occident, Westerner). (various references)

   

Finnish

  

läntinen (west, westerly), länsimainen (occidental), lännenfilmi. (various references)

   

French

  

western, occidental (westerner). (various references)

   

Frisian

  

westlik. (various references)

   

German

  

westlich (occidental, occidentally, to the west, West, westerly). (various references)

   

Greek 

  

γούεστερν, γουέστερν, δυτικόσ (occidental, westward), δυτικός. (various references)

   

Hebrew 

  

מערבון (horse opera). (various references)

   

Hungarian

  

western (horse opera), nyugati (hesperian, occidental, west, westering, westerly, westerner, westward). (various references)

   

Indonesian

  

sebelah barat. (various references)

   

Italian

  

occidentale (occidental, West, westerly, westerner, westwards). (various references)

   

Japanese Kanji 

  

西部劇 , ウェーバーの法則 (on-deck batter's circle, rag, taking a pitch, wafer, wafers, waist, waist bag, waist nipper, waist pouch, waistcoat, waistline, wait, waiter, waiting circle, waiting game, waiting room, waiting system, waitress, Wales, walk rally, walk through, walkathon, walkie-lookie, walkie-talkie, walking dictionary, walking shoes, Walkman, war cry, war game, ware, -ware, warehouse, warm, warming, warming-up, warm-up, warning lamp, waste ball, water chute, water closet, water hazard, water polo, watercolor, watercooler, waterfall, waterfront, watermelon, waterproof, watertight, wave, wave-front, way, weapon, wear, weather, weathercock, weatherstrip molding, web, Weber, Weber's law, wedding, wedding bell, wedding cake, wedding dress, wedding march, wedding ring, wedding veil, wedeling, wedge heel, wedge sole, weight, weight lifting, weight training, welcome, well-done, west, West Coast, West End, West Point, West Side, West Virginia, Western grip, Western league, Western music, Westinghouse, wet, wet core, wet cut, wet suit, worm gear). (various references)

   

Japanese Katakana 

  

せいぶげき, ウェスタン , ウエスタン . (various references)

   

Korean 

  

서쪽 (West). (various references)

   

Manx

  

heear (in the west). (various references)

   

Papiamen

  

oksidental. (various references)

   

Pig Latin

  

esternway.(various references)

   

Portuguese

  

ocidental (hesperian, occidental, west, west-ender, westerly, westerner, westward, westwards). (various references)

   

Portuguese Brazilian

  

ocidental. (various references)

   

Romanian

  

vestic (occidental, West), om originar din apus, occidental (occidental, West), membru al bisericii occidentale, locuitor din vest, film cu cowboys, de apus, apusean (occidental, West, westerner). (various references)

   

Russian 

  

западный (Hesperian, occidental, westerly, westwardly). (various references)

   

Scottish

  

Innse Gall (Hebrides, Western Islands). (various references)

   

Serbo-Croatian

  

zapadni (hesperian, occidental, west, westerly, westward, westwards), kaubojski film. (various references)

   

Spanish

  

occidental (hesperian, occidental, West, westerner). (various references)

   

Swedish

  

västra (West, westerly, westlerly). (various references)

   

Turkish

  

kovboy romanı, kovboy filmi (horse opera), batiya aít, batıya ait, batılı (occident, occidental, westerner), batı ile ilgili, batı amerikalı (westerner), batı (occident, occidental, West). (various references)

   

Ukrainian

  

ковбойський, вестовий (westerly), вестерн, мешканець заходу (westerner), західний (hesperian, occidental, westerly, westwardly). (various references)

   

Welsh

  

gorllewinwr (westerner), gorllewinol. (various references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Ancestral Language Translations: Western

LanguagePeriodTranslations
Latin500 BCE-Modern

Alnus oregona Nutt., Alnus rubra Bong.non Marshall, Bufo boreas, Larix occidentalis, occidaneus, occidentalis, occidente, occidentem, occidentis, occidentium, occidualis, Tsuga heterophilla, vesperalis, vespertinus. (various references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Bible Trace: Western

LanguageDateSourceNumbers Chapter 34, Verse 6
Greek (transliterated)250 BCSeptuagintKai ta oria thV qalasshV estai umin h qalassa h megalh oriei touto estai umin ta oria thV qalasshV
Latin405VulgatePlaga autem occidentalis a mari Magno incipiet et ipso fine cludetur
Middle English1395WyclifForsothe of thilk wallid townes also to the Leuytes ye shulen yyue, six shal be seuerd into the helpes of fugityues, that he that shedith blood, fleey to hem; and out taken hem, othir two and fourti wallid townes,
Renaissance English1526TyndaleAnd youre west quarter shall be the greate see which coste shalbe youre west coste.
Jacobean English1611King JamesAnd as for the western border, ye shall even have the great sea for a border: this shall be your west border.
Victorian English1833WebsterAnd as for the western border, ye shall even have the great sea for a border: this shall be your west border.
Basic English1964OgdenAnd for your limit on the west you will have the Great Sea and its edge: this will be your limit on the west.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Matched Bible Translations: Western

LanguageNumbers Chapter 34, Verse 6
CebuanoUg alang sa utlanan dapit sa kasadpan, mamainyo ang dakung dagat ug ang utlanan niini: kini mamao ang inyong utlanan dapit sa kasadpan.
Chinese西 邊 要 以 大 海 為 界 ． 這 就 是 你 們 的 西 界 。
CroatianZapadna granica bit æe vam Veliko more; neka vam je to granica prema zapadu.
DanishHvad Vestgrænsen angår, skal det store Hav være eders Grænse; det skal være eders Vestgrænse.
DutchAangaande de landpale van het westen, daar zal u de grote zee de landpale zijn; dit zal uw landpale van het westen zijn.
FinnishJa teidän läntisenä rajananne olkoon Suuri meri; tämä olkoon läntisenä rajananne.
FrenchVotre limite occidentale sera la grande mer: ce sera votre limite à l`occident.
GermanAber die Grenze gegen Abend soll diese sein, nämlich das große Meer. Das sei eure Grenze gegen Abend.
HungarianA napnyugoti határotok pedig legyen néktek a nagy tenger; ez legyen néktek a napnyugoti határotok.
Indonesian-Bahasa Sehari-hariLaut Tengah merupakan batas negerimu di sebelah barat.
Indonesian-Terjemahan LamaMaka perhinggaan kamu di sebelah barat itu lautan besar; ia itu perhinggaan negerimu pada sebelah barat.
ItalianLa vostra frontiera a occidente sarà il Mar Mediterraneo: quella sarà la vostra frontiera occidentale.
MaoriNa, ko te rohe ki te hauauru, ko te moana nui me tona rohe; ko to koutou rohe ki te hauauru tenei.
NorwegianI vest skal eders grense være det store hav og landet langsmed det; dette skal være eders grense i vest.
RussianБ ЗТБОЙГЕА ЪБРБДОПА ВХДЕФ Х ЧБУ ЧЕМЙЛПЕ НПТЕ: ЬФП ВХДЕФ Х ЧБУ ЗТБОЙГБ Л ЪБРБДХ;
Spanish"'Vuestra frontera occidental será el mar Grande. Éste será vuestro límite occidental.
SwedishOch eder gräns i väster skall vara Stora havet; det skall utgöra gränsen. Detta skall vara eder gräns i väster.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Western

Derivations

Words beginning with "western": westerner, westerners, westernisation, westernisations, westernise, westernised, westernises, westernising, westernization, westernizations, westernize, westernized, westernizes, westernizing, westernmost, westerns. (additional references)

Words ending with "western": midwestern, northwestern, southwestern. (additional references)

Words containing "western": northwesternmost, southwesternmost. (additional references)


Misspellings

"Western" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Estern, weatern, webter, weeste, wesen, westa, westan, weste, westen, wester, westerd, Westner, westren, wetten. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Rhyming with "Western"

# of Phoneme MatchesPronunciationWord(s) rhyming with "western" (pronounced we"stern or hwe"stern)
6w e" s t er nmidwestern, northwestern, southwestern.
4-s t er ncistern, eastern, northeastern, southeastern.
3-t er nintern, lantern, lectern, pattern.
6-w e" s t er nmidwestern, northwestern, southwestern.
4-s t er ncistern, eastern, northeastern, southeastern.
3-t er nintern, lantern, lectern, pattern.

Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

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Anagrams: Western

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "e-e-n-r-s-t-w"

-1 letter: enters, nester, newest, renest, renews, rentes, resent, resewn, rewets, strewn, tenser, ternes, treens, wester.

-2 letters: enter, ernes, ester, ewers, nerts, newer, newts, reest, renew, rente, rents, reset, resew, rewet, sente, sewer, sneer, steer, stere, stern, strew, sweer, sweet, teens, tense, terne, terns, terse, treen, trees, trews, tween, weens, weest, weets, wrens, wrest.

 Words containing the letters "e-e-n-r-s-t-w"
 

+1 letter: bestrewn, westerns.

 

+2 letters: stoneware, strewment, sweetener, treelawns, westering, westerner, whiteners, winterers.

 

+3 letters: bestrewing, earwitness, enwreathes, interviews, midwestern, newmarkets, newscaster, newsletter, overstrewn, presweeten, spleenwort, stonewares, strewments, sweeteners, sweltering, treenwares, unwreathes, warrantees, wateriness, waterlines, westerners, westernise, westernize, winteriest, winterizes.

 

+4 letters: awestricken, intertwines, interweaves, newscasters, newsletters, northwester, oversweeten, overwinters, presweetens, spleenworts, stonewaller, swartnesses, swingletree, twinberries, underwrites, watermelons, weatherings, wentletraps, westernised, westernises, westernized, westernizes, westernmost, wienerwurst, wilderments, wintertides, wintertimes, wonderments.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

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INDEX

1. Definition
2. Synonyms
3. Crosswords
4. Usage: Modern 		5. Usage: Commercial
6. Images: Slideshow
7. Images: Photo Album
8. Images: Digital Art 		9. Sounds
10. Quotations: Familiar
11. Quotations: Historic
12. Quotations: Fiction 		13. Quotations: Non-fiction
14. Quotations: Spoken
15. Quotations: Speeches
16. Usage Frequency 		17. Names: Frequency
18. Names: Derived from
19. Names: Company Usage
20. Cities 		21. Expressions
22. Expressions: Internet
23. Translations: Modern
24. Translations: Ancient 		25. Bible Trace
26. Abbreviations
27. Acronyms
28. Derivations 		29. Rhymes
30. Anagrams
31. Bibliography


  

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