THE

IMPERIAL

•«

ENCYCLOPAEDIA.

A.

A the first letter, as well as the first vowel, in the alphabet,lias four diflerent sounds. The broad sound, as in all,zvasli. The open, as in father, part. The slender, as•9 in place, mate. And the short sound, exemplified inhat, fat. In our calendar, A is the first of the seven dominicalletters, as it was anciently with the llomans, the first of their eighttit era: nundiales. In music, A is used in the tenor, to deno-minate the first of the seven simple sounds; in the treble, it is'he note which lies between the 2d and 3d line, and in the bass,that upon the top, or 5th line. Among logicians, it denotes an uni-versal affirmative proposition.

As a word, A is used both as an article, and a preposition;thus a man, a house; &c. tw elve hours a day, a thousand pounds ayear, mean so many hours, and pounds, each day, and by the year.

As an abbreviation, A has been used in a variety of cases,both by the ancients and moderns. , The Romans used it, both inenacting new laws, and in trying criminal causes. When a new'aw' was proposed, or an amendment of an old one, each voter gottwo ballots, the one marked A, signifying antiquo, q. d. antiquum"Colo, I like the ancient law, and the other, V. R. for uti rogus,as you desire; and he gave his suffrage, by putting the one or theother into the urn. In criminal causes they used three ballots,which were delivered to each of the judges; one inscribed A, forabsolvq, I acquit, whence Cicero calls this letter, litera salutaris,the saving letter; another marked C, for condemno, I condemn;and the third, N.L. for non liquet, it is not clear. From the ma-jority of these cast into the urn, the pra’tor pronounced the fate ofhe prisoner. If the ballots marked A and C were equal in num-iev, he was acquitted. In their ancient inscriptions on monuments,c. the sense of the A is chielly to he collected, from the generalconnect > 01 ' of the words. A, single, stands for auras,Vm’ ’’ fiunt, ante, a:dcs, trdilis, aula, arena, amicus,sJi' hm' double, it denotes the plural, auli, augusti, amici,

*re. When itoccurs after the

cient Greek and°R aman h,,n to be J ou, ?S* <»*of coinage, as ...modern i rench coins

Viation fur^a/inn ^ % ,n f" historians used it as an abhre-

in the year from’ ft **}’ S m’- stau ( ls f or ulmo conl H t(l .

ehronologers d o n < v" °* lhe Clt ^ Modern historians and

the veat of (be n ? same as A - N1 - «««« mundi, inVh^tan , e°ve, ; 'V ^ A ' A ’ C ' «»«»

It is likew ise ', ? • ° f . , OUr Lonl)lbe >' car b(-fol ' e Cln-ist, & c .

VOL J—’no’T abbrumtl0nfoi '“'' aiw b thus, a. B. artium

ivoman medals, A commonly points out he placeArgos, Antioch, Athens, Aquileia , ike. but onjoins, A is the mark of the mint at Paris , and A A of

bacca/aureus, bachelor of arts, A. M. artium magistcr, master ofarts. Among inerchants, bankers, &c. both in England and France ,it is put to bills of exchange, as a mark of acceptance. And it isused by' physicians, in their prescriptions, as a contraction of theGreek preposition am, to denote that equal parts are to be takenof the medicines specified; in which case it is written either singleor double, A, a, or aa. Among chemists, it is tripled AAA, toexpress an amalgam, or the operation of amalgamating. A. R. P.is an abbreviation tor archbishop, A. D. for archduke, &c. Asanumeral, Awasused by the ancient Greeks, aswellasby the Jews ,to denote the number one: and among the Romans in (he daysof barbarism, it stood for 500; but when w ritten w ith a dah overit, thus a, it denoted 5000. Our merchants still continue theGreek and Hebrew custom, in numbering their books by the letters,A, B, C, &rc. instead of figures.—In algebra, A, or a, and theother first letters of the alphabet, are used to express known quan-tities, and the last letters to express such as are unknown.

A A, a river of Brabant which waters Ilelmont, and joins theDommel, near Bois le due.

Aa, a river of Westphalia , which falls into the Embs.

Aa, a river of l-’rance, which falls into the German Ocean.

AA BAM, a term used by some French alchemists for lead.

AALBORG, a bishopric of Denmark, in north Jutland ; alsothe capital of the bishopric, and after Copenhagen , the richest midmost populous tow n in Denmark . Lon. 9. 4b. E. Lat. 56. 50. N.

AALEN, a town of Suabia , situated on the Kocher. Lon. 1012. E. Lat. 48. 45. N.

A AM, or I1AAM, a liquid measure used by the Dutch , con-taining 288 pints English .

AAMA, a province of Barbary of very difficult access.

AAR, a small island in the Baltic, also a river in Westphalia ,and another in Switzerland .

AARI1UUS, a large diocese and city in north Jutland .

AARON, (prw Heb. a mountaineer), the bvolherof Moses , andfirst high priest of the Israelites , liis history being fully narratedin the pentateuch, it needs only to be added here, that he died upon■.noun! lior, in the 123d year of His age, being the 40th after thedeparture from Egypt , A. M. 2552, of the Julian period, 3262,

\ and before the Christian ara, 1452.

Aaron, St. a British marty r, who suffered under Dioclesian

Aaron IIarischon, See IIarischon.

Aaron, or Haroun, Al Raschid, a celebrated khalif of theSaracen empire .

AAR SENS, Peter, a painter called Long Peter, was born atAmsterdam , in 1519. He particularly excelled in altar pieces,ii ’ AAV ORA