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Brown·ing

(brounĭng), Elizabeth Barrett 1806-1861.

British poet. Overcoming ill health and the jealous objections of her tyrannical father, she eloped to Italy with Robert Browning and married him in 1846. Her greatest work, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), is a sequence of love poems written to her husband.

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Browning, Robert 1812-1889.

British poet best known for dramatic monologues such as "My Last Duchess," "Fra Lippo Lippi," and "The Bishop Orders His Tomb." His work, including his masterpiece, The Ring and the Book (1868-1869), explored new ways of using diction and poetic rhythm.

Browning, John Moses 1855-1926.

American firearms inventor whose designs include repeating rifles, automatic pistols, and a machine gun dubbed "the Peacemaker" that was used in the Spanish-American War and adapted for aerial warfare in World War I.

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

Indo-European Roots

Semitic Roots

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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